Re: Is multi-type data in one field normal?

"Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_at_ywho.com> wrote in message news:KdGla.19$037.259_at_news.oracle.com...
> "Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message
> news:r%Fla.338$zK7.33448137_at_mantis.golden.net...
> > Having the application create new tables at the user's request means
that
> > the application must have access to a user id with resource privileges.
> > Either the business must grant these privileges to all of the users of
the
> > application, or the application must hard-code or store a
> user-id/password.
> > Any of these options could present security issues.
>
> I don't see any problem here. A user has privilege to create a table, what
> is big deal about it?

What's the big deal about the privilege to insert data? To suddenly require recompiles of any number of speed critical applications? What's the big deal about any security authorization? Should we just give every authorization to every user? Why don't we just do away with security altogether? Puh-lease.

> > All of the unecessary DDL will prevent static compilation (if this is
> > necessary or desired) and will force the application to use dynamic SQL
or
> > some other form of code generation to deal with the multitude of table
> names
> > for similar queries.
>
> Do you expect static compilation working with new types declared on the
fly?
> I don't see any difference.

Nobody has suggested or established a need for on the fly type declaration for this application.

> > The application that allows users to create new statistics must either
> force
> > end-users to invent unique legal names for each of the tables, or the
> > application must generate a unique legal name that may lack meaning to
> > users.
>
> Same for new types.

Again, nobody has suggested or established a need for new types.

> > The principle of orthogonal design requires that each of these
statistics
> > tables have a unique predicate, and I am unsure what predicate you might
> > suggest. It is not entirely clear to me that every different statistic
> type
> > will have a unique domain.
>
> Once again, how does the design with user-defined types solves this
problem?

This specific issue is independent of the type issue. The single heterogeneous list only needs one predicate to keep the design orthogonal. When you suggest making multiple tables instead, you must provide the unique predicates for each of those tables.

While not particularly relevant to this specific issue in any case, nobody has suggested or established a need for new types.

> Given 2 records with the same type, what predicate would you choose to
> distinguish them?

My preference for a heterogeneous list obviates any need to establish one. Received on Fri Apr 11 2003 - 23:31:18 CEST