Re: Development as Configuration

mAsterdam wrote:
> dawn wrote:
>
> > I just did a little Java Server Faces prototype. It included:
> > jsp (which is a spec'ing language for java servlets)
> > xhtml
> > css
> > javascript
> > java (beans)
> > properties files

I see I missed the varous tag libraries in the above list

> > and if I had done more, it would have had xml too, with xml schema,
and
> > then often SQL for persistence, perhaps also a stored procedure
flavor
> > of SQL and of course compiled with an ant script (xml). Maybe I've
> > gotten to those "remember the good ole' days" age, but this sure
seems
> > like a lot of varying "languages" to have to be proficient in just
to
> > write a small app with a GUI and a DB.
>
> Hi dawn O:-)
>
> Why use SQL for persistence? Any filesystem could provide that, no?

An obvious mAstersam response ;-) so here is mine:

There are two reasons for using SQL as the API for persistance. 1) If someone else determined at some other time that a SQL-DBMS would be used for storing the data with which my app is working or 2) If I determined that there were features of a SQL-DBMS that gave an advantage over a simple file system so that I chose to use PostgreSQL, for example, for a given project. Because SQL is so pervasive in tools that have as a PRIMARY feature (smiling) an API for creating, reading, updating, and deleting data on secondary storage devices, it is often used in even the simplest database applications.

Sure, there are other features that are important for DBMS tools, such as security and referential integrity, but many a software application has included code for those features too. To date it appears to me that people license DBMS tools for the PRIMARY, not negotiable, feature of having an API for creating, reading, updating, and deleting data on secondary storage devices, even if there are other important features too. Right?
Cheers! --dawn Received on Wed May 04 2005 - 17:34:25 CEST