Re: Clean Object Class Design -- What is it?

From: akmal _at_ city <akmal_at_soi.city.ac.uk.nospam>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:50:43 +0100
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10107241340090.20440-100000_at_altair.soi.city.ac.uk>


On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Lee Fesperman wrote:

> akmal _at_ city wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Jim Melton wrote:
> >
> > Jim,
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > > > False 3: Object databases do not have performance advantages.
> > > >
> > > > Again, you have not explained why my statement is false. I have
> > > > repeatedly explained why it is true:
> > > >
> > > > The relational model determines only how the DBMS represents data to
> > > > the user and not how the DBMS stores the data. Since the DBMS can
> > > > store the data identically to a non-relation ODBMS, it can achieve
> > > > equivalent performance.
> > >
> > > Your statement is false because there is no commercially available database
> > > today that can achieve the real-world performance of (most, many, all?)
> > > object databases.
 

> > :-o
> >
> > For what kind of applications? (most, many, all?)
> >
> > <akmal/>
>
> I must say that was quite an overreaching statement. It apparently includes operations
> where object databases clearly perform poorly --- like ad-hoc queries.
>
> --
> Lee Fesperman, FFE Software, Inc. (http://www.firstsql.com)
> ===================================================================
> * Check out Database Debunkings (http://www.firstsql.com/dbdebunk/)
> * "The Forum Where Database Matters Are Set Straight"
>
>

Lee,

I agree. Even in cases where an application has been "objectified", there may not be any significant performance gain provided by an OODB. Example:

U. Hohenstein, V. Plesser and R. Heller (1999) Evaluating the performance of object-oriented database systems by means of a concrete application. Journal on Theory and Practice of Object Systems. Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 249-261.

Only one of the OODBs in this analysis was really competitive with the RDB. And that was possible by looking at the tuning options in detail.

I'd really like to see more papers like this.

<akmal/>

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Received on Tue Jul 24 2001 - 14:50:43 CEST

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