Re: newbie queston: why would anyone use Oracle?

PJ6 wrote:
> "Mladen Gogala" <gogala_at_sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
> news:pan.2005.09.22.11.52.19.914999_at_sbcglobal.net...
> > Actually, you were taught wrong, whoever might have been teaching you.
> > There are situations in which you want to implement simple procedural
> > logic: if the customer doesn't have enough money on the account, abort
> > transaction. Log the attempt in the activity table.
> > It is a short "if-then" logic which can be masked with complex data
> > types, for no apparent benefit. Furthermore, there is one crucial problem
> > with the OO stuff: interoperability. Classes are types and the logic is
> > hidden ("encapsulated") in the class definitions. Relational databases,
> > like 3GL languages, have very simple type structure: NUMBER, DATE,
> > CHAR, and VARCHAR2. That's it. It was designed for portability. As soon
> > as you introduce variable types, databases stop inter-operating.
> > Purist OO solutions are a religious practice, not a practical programming
> > methodology. In the real world, one needs simple 3GL things to do simple
> > things in a simple way. That is PL/SQL, simplicity itself.
>
> The original statement that I was commenting on was:
>
> "An extremely powerful procedural language"
>
> Doing "simple things in a simple way" does not require "extremely powerful";
> my comment was to be taken to the effect that I would not use the more
> "powerful" procedural features, whatever they may be, because they are
> probably not simple deviations from the relational model.
>
> Paul

The idea that PL/SQL is for "introducing loops and other procedural badness directly into my queries" or that it is "simple", or that you shouldn't use various arbitrary features on the grounds that "they are probably not simple deviations from the relational model" is absolutely ridiculous and an insult to full-time PL/SQL developers. That includes me by the way. It is as simple or otherwise as you choose to make it. PL/SQL has nothing whatever to do with introducing loops into queries. That is what XML is for. Jeez.

William Robertson
http://Oracle-WTF.blogspot.com Received on Fri Sep 23 2005 - 13:33:07 CDT