Opinions on INSTEAD OF TRIGGERS(and probably also "old triggers)

Hi!

I haven't tried these new triggers yet and would like opinions/experiences on their use.

I'm slightly worried that they hide logic in a unfortunate way. I feel that the old triggers do, of course sometimes it is ok to use them (like keeping denormalized information up to date in another table). But I feel that their actions are hidden from the developers; you do a Insert, but there are more logic going on than you see, without digging all_triggers. To me these new triggers have the same tendencies. One situation that I see use of them is if you have a legacy Oracle system, and you must implement views over a partially redesigned datamodel, and in order to keep old insert/update statements running you choose to implement instead of triggers. But is it a good idea to start using them alot in new applications?

Also in the old triggers there were complications (read: mutating :-) when trying to implement too much business logic in the trigger, it is possible to work around it, but the developer must keep those problems in mind.

Have anyone any "best practise" to choose to use instead of triggers for, compared to eg. using plsql procedures to insert/update? Are they necessary for OO databases for instance?

Frank Received on Sun Mar 18 2001 - 06:26:37 CST