Re: Is it really that bad?

"JRStern" <JRStern_at_gte.net> wrote in message news:3aa5201d.6353966_at_news.gte.net...
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2001 02:56:50 +1300, "kurt" <out_sp0k1n_at_yahoo.co.nz>
> wrote:
> 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.
 Well, up to here was their design.
>
> 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. Front-end objects should
> map only loosely to tables, even loosely (non-uniquely) to stored
> procedures, views. Only when your architecture is more complex, and
> you need to persist objects that draw data from many sources, do you
> have something on the back-end, that can be simply wrapped by a class
> on the front-end. And, putting a unique ID on each row for most data,
> is a common thing that I know Microsoft teaches and recommends, but it
> is still dubious, at best. Relational theory is based on putting a
> primary key on each row, which is composed of one or more actual
> fields of data, not an added ID.

When I have worked with a db structured in this way, it is really a lot simpler to work with, from the standpoint of developing applications. (Of course it suffers from a disappointing lack of buzz-words.)
Does it take a much more ability/experience/talent to design and implement the database in this way?
The OO-Relational dbs I have seen are fairly simply designed - most of the tables map directly to real world objects, and all relationships are defined by
foreign key to unique ID associations.
(Actually, I can probably answer my own question: doing anything properly takes
more effort than doing it improperly...)
> --
>
> I'll bet they don't really have any idea how it should
> look, not your way, not my way, no idea at all. Tell me if that's
> right or wrong!?!?
There is definitely a gap between what I heard and what was expected, really it's hard for me to say how they expected it too look: I thought that I had done it their way.
> Joshua Stern
> JRStern_at_gte.net
>
Received on Wed Mar 07 2001 - 11:49:10 CET