Re: Is it really that bad?

Wow, I just came back from a frustrating meeting with a client's client, who's database I thought was just f'd up to the max, and realized after hearing their tech guy talk for a few minutes that he was trying to force an OO database from a relational one. I haven't been keeping up with RDBMS trends, and my main experience with RDBMS is 10+ years old, but I had no idea that such a bastardization was common. No wonder all the SQL queries, which should have been simple, were becoming hideously complex.

Is there some reference that discusses this in detail?

Thanks,

        -Mike

JRStern wrote:
>
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2001 02:56:50 +1300, "kurt" <out_sp0k1n_at_yahoo.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
> >My problem is:
> >In Java, we mapped every (relational) database table to a class,
> >gave every row in each table a unique id, all fairly
> >straight-forward,
> ...
>
> Yes, I've seen this design so often that I guess lots of people call
> it straight-forward, unfortunately, I think it is also dead wrong.
> But then, I don't know what your constraints were.
>
> My starting architecture is always a purely relational back-end with
> an OO front-end. With that architecture, it is a huge, but common,
> error to start by wrapping every table in a class. The entire point
> of a relational database is that you query it with joins, and let the
> back end do all sort of filtering and logic. [...]

-- 
======================================================================
Michael Wiik
Principal
Messagenet Communications Research
Washington DC Area Internet and WWW Consultants
http://messagenet.com
mwiik_at_messagenet.com
======================================================================