Re: Development as Configuration

mAsterdam wrote:
> dawn wrote:
>
> > Alfredo Novoa wrote:
> >
> >>>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?
> >>
> >>Completely wrong. The primary function of a DBMS is
> >>to manage data and not to be misused as a file system.
> >
> > I'm not suggesting what the purpose is -- I saying what a primary
> > requirement from the user's perspective it is meeting. There are
> > DBMS's that are missing a lot of features, but I don't know of any
that
> > are deemed to be DBMS's and are missing a CRUD API. So, I would
> > suggest that from the standpoint of someone who is looking for a
DBMS,
> > one feature they would not be interested in compromising on is
whether
> > it has a CRUD API. It is, I'll repeat, a primary feature for any
DBMS
> > product. Do you really disagree with that? If so, please provide
a
> > URL for a DBMS that is missing this feature.
>
> It is not a feature. In order to be able to manage the data, the
> DSMS must assume there is no data traffic in or out of the database
> outside the control of the DBMS. So, any DBMS _has_ to provide a
> data manipulation interface.

And just what do you call this capability that a DBMS product has that is not a feature of the product? It seems to me that providing this API is a rather important feature of the product, essential even.

smiles. --dawn Received on Fri May 06 2005 - 02:44:04 CEST