Re: Can we solve this -- NFNF and non-1NF at Loggerheads

<lauri.pietarinen_at_atbusiness.com> wrote in message news:1108076484.570592.182420_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

> The application and the database communicate "only" thru SQL, so
> there is a lot of metadata that is not communicated between the
> layers, at least not without a lot of effort. I have to confess
> that I don't have a lot of experience with 4GL's except for
> SAS (it had a lousy DB, though).
>
> What I mean is that the app environment is not aware of
> the structure of the DB without lot's of (hand-) coding.
>

Perhaps that's why I look back on Datatrieve so fondly. While I would hardly call Datatrieve a 4GL by any stretch of the imagination, it was possible to build a small information system in it with very little hand coding of common activities.

It contained its own primitives for restrict and join. Project was only added much later. The Datatrieve "programmer" did NOT have to learn SQL. In fact, Datatrieve didn't even use an SQL like interface until the late 1980s.
In short, the power to hassle ratio of Datatrieve was quite favorable.

The world has turned many times since those days. I would NOT want to "bring back Datatrieve". But something that it captured has NOT been captured by the later, more ubiquitous products. I'm not exactly sure waht that was.

> >
> > > SQL-DBMSes are app. environment neutral, which is of course a good
> > > thing, but
> > > we are losing in productivity. In my opinion J2EE has set us back
> 20
> > > years.
> >
> > In what way? (Not that I disagree. I just want clarification.)
>
> There has been an artificial layer created between the DB and the UI.
> You need a lot of code just to get simple stuff the screen.
> Adding insult to injury you get poor performance.

Here's my two cents. It may or may not be the same thing you are saying.

Java, being derived from C++, which in turn is derived from C, is a very low level language.

COBOL, for all the fact that it's a difficult language for "real programmers" and really primitive from a certain perspective, is a high level language. I've never used a high level object oriented language, myself. From my reading of the literature, I suspect that Eiffel was such a language, but I'd love to hear from people who actually used it.

High level languages don't distract high level programmers with tedious details. The cost is that the high level programmer has to relinquish some control, by delegating certain choices to the compiler and the run time system.

I think the programming community has lost sight of this trade off. Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 08:26:36 CST