Re: Generic Modeling

> Well, in SQL you can "instantiate" anything with an INSERT statement,
> and you can "copy/paste" with an INSERT ... FROM ... statement. But I
> admit for complex structures you would need to use a hierarchial query
> or some procedural code. If you are talking about creating a row
> (object) of a table (class) without having created a specific table
> (class) to organize the data for the row (object), that is not an
> argument for a OODB instead of a RDB, but rather an argument for
> generic modeling (which you can obviously do in an OODB or an RDB).

In XDb, a person can copy any object and all its dependent objects and relationships with a single/simple Copy(Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V). For example the object may be a battleship which contains jets, rockets, tanks, people, etc. The person issuing the copy command need not know that there are a million other objects arranged in a 100-level hierarchy below the top object. This level of "genericness" is extremely difficult in a rdb, unless you resort to generic modelling and execution time is not critical. Received on Fri Jan 04 2002 - 22:31:38 CET