Re: WWW and Oracle

Magnus Lonnroth wrote:
> argue about it. Anyway, PL/SQL is not a 4GL.

glad to hear someone say that. not that i've ever been sure what a 4GL really was (other than a jumble of function calls, etc). at any rate, pl/sql looks more like a real language to me than the things i see called 4GLs.

What is a 4GL anyway?

> There are some obvious reasons why you would not choose to use our
> current PL/SQL approach to generate dynamic content in html pages:
> - need to interface with external things

but note that with pl/sql 2.3 (in Oracle server 7.3), one can do OS file I/O (via the utl_file package)

> - need to access blobs

personally, i don't think there's any good reason to store blobs in an Oracle table. However, if one disagrees, and is looking for a somewhat WOW/WebServer related solution (via Pro*C), see:

  http://www.research.missouri.edu/webacle/docs/blobs_page.html

...
> The key is really to choose the right tool for a given task, and as

yes, that's the main point. in WWW-based development, while one may emphasize one tool or another, it is easy to combine them by just passing between various URLs for the various parts that are best handled by PL/SQL, Perl, or C (or embedded Java applets). and, for getting data in and out of Oracle databases, PL/SQL is easily the best.

> indicated, PL/SQL is suitable for some, but not all.
 

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Thomas Dunbar    540 231-3938 (fax 3714)   http://gserver.grads.vt.edu/