Re: Specifying all biz rules in relational data

"robert" <gnuoytr_at_rcn.com> wrote in message news:da3c2186.0409190727.474bed12_at_posting.google.com...

> they've got 1,000,000 lines of COBOL dating back to 1975 that
> works (well, except for the bugs)??? it's called "running a
> cycle". everybody used to do it. close a month, clear the
> accumulator "files", etc. Some systems still run that way.

This is significant. There are probably millions of sites that run things originally designed and written some thirty years ago, and that code arguably has not yet reached "sunset". If it ain't broke (except for bugs), don't fix it. But that doesn't mean that new code should necessarily be written along the same lines.

Looking back to the earlier discussion, the question was about whether biz rules should be coded as data, and enforced in the DBMS, or not. Your earlier comment about efficiency beating elegance 24/7 has to be taken in context.

It depends. If the overhead of doing things "elegantly" is on the order of 20%, and if that can be compensated for by some additional hardware, and if the "elegant" solution buys you something that lowers cost somewhere else, it may be the case that elegance actually beats efficiency.

Having said that, I know some COBOL or BASIC shops that would have run be out of there if I had suggested implementing the rules in the DBMS. In some circumstances, this can be a position well taken. In other circumstances, it's just resistance to change. Received on Sun Sep 19 2004 - 20:46:29 CEST