Re: Need help modeling workflow

John Bossert wrote:

> The object-oriented (java) developers want a wide-open set of tables
> ("just give me a table with 5 nullable numeric columns and I'll figure out
> what goes in each") which just makes me cringe.

With reason.

I have little respect for many Java developers. Their thinking stops at language level. Push them tehnically any further and they're idiots. (yeah, flame bait I know - so bring it on!)

Tell your Java developers that if that is their reasoning and requirements when dealing with a database, is merely wanting to use a state-of-the-art RDBMS as a dumb data repository, that they should roll their own.

Tell them to create persistant classes with the ability to stream these to disk and to memory. Problem solved. (been there, done that, works great for certain types of applications where footprint is small and no database services are available)

Of course, it is very unlikely that they will be able to do this within the context of the system that you're describing.

So, hopefully this will prove to them the point that Java is not Everything, and that database design and leveraging the power and flexibility of the RDBMS is even MORE important that how froody the friggen developenment language is perceived to be.. but I have my doubts when some insist on subclassing their knowledge from class::ignorance.

--
Billy