Re: The IDS, the EDS and the DBMS

From: mAsterdam <mAsterdam_at_vrijdag.org>
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 11:11:29 +0200
Message-ID: <413ad842$0$42417$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>

Laconic2 wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:

>>Laconic2 wrote:
>>>mAsterdam wrote:
>>L:>
>>
>>>>>It's hacking into information that was not written to be shared.
>>>>
>>>>This is a very important observation, IMHO.
>>>>It looks like it is shared data (because of the
>>>>tools used) but it's not.
>>>
>>>Yes.  In particular,  wouldn't it be great is there were
>>>a tool  called a PEDMS  (persistent encapsulated data
>>>management system)  that would be a DIFFERENT TOOL than
>>>a DBMS?  Maybe it wouldn't even need an SQL port or a
>>>built in data dictionary.  Should be lots cheaper than a DBMS.
>>
>>If the sharing requirement is really dropped, any
>>filesystem will do, no?

>
> Not necessarily. Just because there is no goal of
> including metadata or the subject of structured
> queries doesn't mean that EDS builders might not
> want to provide concurrency control, and shared
> access, among many objects of the same class...

There is some sharing going on here.
So, let's differentiate.

Persistence is sharing data between multiple subsequent instances of the same program.
Concurrency control and shared access solve the problems of sharing data between multiple simultane instances of the same program.
Metadata comes into play when data is shared between really different programs. *Really* different as in not sharing the same code.

The last type of sharing would not be supported by the PEDMS, right?

>>In my experience many misunderstandings rise from the
>>wrong expectation that by simply using a RDBMS as
>>a persistence-provider (yes, "CRUD-service") by some
>>magic the stored data instantly becomes shareable.

>
> I agree with you, in part. I don't think any one person thinks of the DBMS
> as a CRUD-server and also the data in it as sharable. What happens is that
> an organization thinks with more than one brain. The applications
> programmers know the database is merely serving up CRUD, but the IT manager
> thinks, RDBMS+SQL+Crystal Reports=Business Information.

Very recognizable, this.

> Neither one of those two bothers to talk to the other one. The conflict
> doesn't become apparent until some poor junior report writer gets tagged
> with the task of turning CRUD into gold.

So - the juniors had better be armed by having been provided with a good background for grip on these issues - or maybe even that wouldn't help them. Received on Sun Sep 05 2004 - 04:11:29 CDT