RE: Universal database interface?

 I think Tom Kyte of asktom fame wrote a response on this topic that said if he was going to design a database independent application he would write a web interface without any SQL calls. Instead all SQL would be encapsulated in procedure calls that pass back cursors. This was you just write a database specific procedure for each port: Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, etc....

Naturally this makes any database without stored procedures a non-choice for the product.

I kind of like this design idea.

IMHO -- Mark D Powell --

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:54 PM
To: jkstill_at_gmail.com
Cc: jonathan_at_gennick.com; Oracle-L_at_freelists.org Subject: Re: Universal database interface?

On 04/12/2005 08:11:41 PM, Jared Still wrote:

> ----
> "Many developers are happy to trade runtime performance for
> cross-platfor=

m=20
> portability."
>=20
> Maybe the developers are happy, because performance is the DBA's
>problem,=

=20
> right?
> ----

Spoken like a true architect! I welcome the standards and "database independent applications". Those are the things that enable me to earn my salary. Here is the law of Mladen: application that starts as a database independent will have to become Oracle specific in order to achieve an acceptable level of performance. My favorite toys are Object-Relational Mappers (ORM), recently a genuine hit among Java duhveleopers. Allegedly, they'll transform a relational query into a Java object which will then be passed through BZZZTYIKL or some other abbreviation resembling Vogon poetry, which will do an indescribable magic and, in particular, generate an acceptable user interface. To attain sub-hour web response, I ended up writing a ton of PL/SQL procedures implementing those "queries". When application was finished, it was database independent, provided that the database was supporting PL/SQL, external tables, BFILE fields, function based indexes and UTL_SMTP package. That is my kind of unified approach and my kind of database independence!

--=20
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l