Re: acceptable way to program

steve wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Recently I have been looking at the various ways people are implementing,
> interaction between java & oracle databases.
>
> I was always instructed on the purity of the data model, "normalize the
> data" etc.
>
> I have seen people Serializing java objects , such as purchase orders
> orders, customer records etc , then sticking the "object" into am oracle blob
> column.
>
> finally when they want to retrieve it they de-serialize the object., work on
> it then re-serialize and stuff it back into the oracle blob.
>
> to me this causes the following problems:
>
> 1. the object can become very big, and can only be recovered in it's
> entirety, and if it contains pictures ,etc, it can become huge.
> 2. the object becomes "closed", in that it cannot be modified or checked in
> situ
> 3. it cannot be searched , without de-serialization.
>
>
> I'm looking to implement a java front end, (oracle back end), system ,that
> allows a product , to be inspected by an inspection team , and comments/
> photographic record kept.
>
> using an "object approach" would make it very simple, but the size of the
> resulting object could be very large.
>
> does anyone have any thoughts how to accomplish this task.
>
>
> steve

Store relationally and create an API from package procedures to handle the transactions between the database and the front-end application.

A good rule of thumb is that if you can't use Crystal Reports to query the database structure with ease ... you have created a nightmare. What you describe, above, is a nightmare.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)