Re: The wisdom of the object mentors (Was: Searching OO Associations with RDBMS Persistence Models)

On 30 May 2006 06:52:49 -0700, Cimode wrote:

[I am not an OO proponent, I swear it on the keyboard! (:-))]

> I noticed a recurring commercial argumentation about creating
> *behavior* into components (named classes). This caracteristics is
> often presented as being a differentiation of relational model where no
> such thing really exists (and in fact is not necessary).

Surely it does. Relational algebra describes the behavior of relational container types.

> In a word, In
> OO approach (for whatever it may rely on), one of the main limitation
> of relational model would be not to allow its elementary components to
> emulate elementary predefined processes (transformations for instance).
>
> I have the impression, there is a concept, unbearable to some
> programmers that data management systems can not be anything else than
> a mechanized set of tool that could help structuring data for human
> interpretation. On that standpoint, relational model components
> reflect an approximation of *meaning* concept as being a contextualized
> and specific combination of constraints, business rules to make
> predefined inferences about that data for preparing interpretation.
> Processes are defined only according to specifically defined
> inferences. On the other side, OO approach seems to advocate that some
> level of elementary process autonomy will end up creating *some* form
> of intelligence thanks to some cumulative effect. On such perspective,
> I start suspecting all debate stating behavior lacking in the
> relational model is an empty unfounded attempt of some IT professional
> to project their scifi fantasies about what system could do and what
> they can actually do in a realistic manner.

I don't think that anybody would seriously insist that RM lacks behavior. People are arguing that it might be not the behavior needed for the case X. Read "not" as "too low-level." It is not an intelligence expected, but a higher abstraction level to handle complexity of the problem space at hand. Machine registers also have a behavior...

> On the other side, some OO advocates state that OO approach brings some
> features that would seem to better implementations of subtype and
> supertypes features through inheritance as well as a better in memory
> physical handling of non primitive types than what we are accustomed to
> with traditional SQL implementations.

It is a vast theme on which there is no consensus. My personal view is that subtyping = inheritance. Almost anybody from either side would disagree with that...

> I am curious about your opinion about this matter as this is a new
> board for me.

Google for old comp.object discussions. It was beaten to death.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de