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

From: S Perryman <a_at_a.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 08:31:41 +0100
Message-ID: <e6odps$p31$1_at_nntp.aioe.org>


"Daniel Parker" <danielaparker_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1150224450.502422.70520_at_c74g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

> Marshall wrote:

>> Robert Martin wrote:

>>> Databases are data centric.  While they have behaviors; those behaviors
>>> are related to data management.  Applications are behavior centric,
>>> while they manipulate data, the things that do to that data are rich
>>> with business rules and formatting behaviors.

>> I'm curious: do you have a definition of "behavior"? I hear this word
>> a lot and I'm not sure exactly what is intended. Is a method
>> behavior? Is a class behavior? What about a function? Is behavior
>> a transformation of data? Wouldn't this make it a synonym for
>> calculation?

> Interestingly enough, in Abadi and Cardelli's book "A Theory of
> Objects", there is no mention of "behavior."  Attempts to put OO on a
> firmer foundation do not seem to have a place for it.

That doesn't come as a surprise.
From a mathematical view, accessing an object property, whether that access simply returns an existing data value or invokes an operation that computes the value, is a moot point.

That is one reason I believe that FP holds the most promise for having systems that combine the OO and RM worlds in a consistent manner (ie not a C++ , not an SQL etc) .

Regards,
Steven Perryman Received on Wed Jun 14 2006 - 09:31:41 CEST

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