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

On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:09:29 GMT, J M Davitt wrote:

> An important clarification is needed here: when relational theory
> advocates talk about data integrity they are talking about constraints
> which are expressed in declarative language.

Yes. The language of constraints is declarative, but that does not make the whole programming language 100% declarative.

> The superiority of
> declarative v. imperative languages has long been decided.

Where that follows from? Who and when has decided?

Concerning constraints, you wouldn't need any, in a purely declarative language. Constraint limits space where an imperative action can be taken.

> In part,
> data dogs slam OO languages because they are, essentially, procedural,
> and building systems using them is extremely difficult.

I'd like to see some proof. In my personal, limited, ignorant, etc experience domain-oriented languages are in order of magnitude worse than worst OOPLs (like C++, for example). Practically all our customers start with some sort of domain-oriented language, be it SQL, Simulink etc. Yes, they get first 20% of functional requirements very quickly. Then, they discover that the rest cannot be made at any cost, that maintenance is a disaster, that non-functional requirements is what they should forever forget of. Our job is basically to throw all that domain-oriented rubbish away. Gradually, slowly, so that the customer wouldn't see it. In five years or so he gets a working system with 5% or less legacy code.

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