Re: OOP - a question about database access

From: Steve Haigh <steve_a_haigh_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 14:08:34 +0000
Message-ID: <zt6dnbx_MvfsOjaiRVn-gw@giganews.com>

Alfredo Novoa wrote:

> "Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin)" <u.n.c.l.e.b.o.b_at_objectmentor.com> wrote in message news:<ig2lqvsfbjjhcniov8lskbdpogkd2oagvb_at_4ax.com>...
>
>

>>>Objects like Employee, Customer, etc are completely unnecessary
>>>because that entities are already managed by the DBMS. You only need
>>>to map the database tables to visual controls like grids, edits, etc.
>>
>>This might be true if the database application does absolutely not
>>processing of the data.  If there are no business rules, and the
>>system does nothing more than add, display, modify, and delete
>>records, then having entity objects may not be very useful.  On the
>>other hand, as soon as you add any business rules, such as field
>>validation, or summary reporting, etc. you need a way to separate
>>those rules from the database.  That's one very useful application for
>>OO.

>
>
> What a pearl!
>
> Sorry for the crossposting again, but I find things like this
> interesting in order to understand the current state of the IT
> industry.

The state of the IT industry is hardly represented by a set of usenet postings, no matter how self important the posters feel.

>
> If recognized OO writers show this "understanding" of the data
> management issues, imagine the rest.

The above comments from Bob do not have any relation to "data management issues". Why would a database be a good place to validate text from an input field, wouldn't it make everyone's life a lot easier if data were validated before making a write to a DB? I have found that business rules are easier to code in a language like Java or C++ rather than through the use of constraints and queries. It does not mean I ignore the functionality of a database, but I choose to write my intensive numeric algorithms, for example, in C++. Such code would typically take in user input, eternal interface input and data from a database. So, what it wrong with this "understanding"? Received on Fri Nov 07 2003 - 08:08:34 CST