Re: How widespread is the use of triggers these days and how concerned about performance?....

Nari Kannan wrote:

> Fifteen years ago when databases were primarily used in the context of
> transaction-intensive applications, triggers were a nice feature of a
> DBMS system that did not get used because of performance concerns.

I disagree. This opinion on triggers is similar to that on referential integrity (RI) 15 years ago - the logic exercised by the database to maintain referential integrity is not free, but if the rdbms does not do it, it gets done in the application, where it costs the same if not more - just now the application becomes "slower" versus the rdbms. Whether the logic of triggers or RI is performed in the application or the database, it's going to have similar pathlength - the only question is whether the rdbms or application can be more efficient. As more applications are written in languages that emphasize portability over performance (Java) or ease of learning over performance (Visualbasic), the benefits of putting logic that centres around data further down into the database engine become stronger.

>
> Fast forward 15 years, it seems to me that 95% of database usage is
> for
> non-transaction intensive information (I could be wrong in this).

I doubt this, but I have no hard evidence to prove you wrong. I suspect that Gartner or some other consulting group has broken down the rdbms market amonght OLTP, BI, OLAP, Data Mining and so forth. I think that OLTP would be more than 5%. Certianly there has been a lot of growth in ERP/CRM companies (SAP, Peoplesoft, Siebel, Baan, JD Edwards) over the last fifteen years, and their premier applications tend to be OLTP-intensive.

> Given this I see increasing usage of triggers for doing various
> necessary things that regular reporting does not do.
>
> Am I just dreaming or that triggers are being increasingly used?

Yes, they are used increasingly. A search on triggers in www.deja.com should show this.

>
> Are performance concerns not important in the above context as long as
> you
> are mindful of stuff like cascading triggers and keeping the trigger
> code short?
>
> Thanks in advance for your insights, experiences and opinions.
>
> regards
> Nari
>
> Nari Kannan
Received on Sat Aug 02 2003 - 17:33:36 CDT