Re: S.O.D.A. database Query API - call for comments

On 23 Jul 2001, Galen Boyer wrote:

Hi Galen,

[snip]

I'll add a few comments if you don't mind.

>
> > Progress and technical advantages against the competition can
> > never be achieved with "save your chair" decisions.
>
> Oh, I think I see. Right now, the OODBs are still in
> experimental stages, and not ready for primetime? You and others
> are trying to get the community to consider the possibilities?
> Well, I am ready for that, but I need to see how today's issues
> are solved in the OODB framework to consider going down that
> route.

OODBs have actually been around quite a long time. Some of the early products were GemStone and ONTOS (early- to mid- 1980s). A second wave came along around the early 1990s (ObjectStore, Objectivity, Versant). They have proved themselves useful in some verticals, such as Telecomms and Finance. However, they have never really reached a significant market share of total database sales. I've not been involved with OODBs for as long as some people, but have been working with them in one form or another for about 10 years. During that time, I've watched interest grow and then wane as new things have come along and the vendors have tried to catch the next technology wave.

There are a couple of tutorials that provide a good intro to the subject of OODBs. For example, Frank Manola's two part report:

ftp://ftp.gte.com/pub/dom/reports/MANO94a.pt1.ps and
ftp://ftp.gte.com/pub/dom/reports/MANO94a.pt2.ps

Download just the first part if you don't have time to read it all.

>
> > New products have to overcome two hurdles: First they need at
> > least the stability of old products that are said to have
> > "industrial strength". Second they need to develop this
> > credibility among potential customers. It's a long way to go.
>
> Yes, I think OODB has a long way to go. I'm just trying to
> understand what business problem does it solve. The only one I
> can see is that it makes the application development cycles
> shorte. This would decrease cost to the customer, which is a
> good thing. But, I don't see how the application that is built
> is better at solving the business issues that are currently being
> solved by relational technology.

It can help in some cases, particularly if you are using an OOPL. However, there are also drawbacks and total cost of ownership/business issues in my observation. I've discussed some of the issues that I think have been big problems for OODBs in a number of presentations. The SJUG talk I gave just recently covers many of them. Slides are available here:

http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~akmal/html.dir/publications.html

There is also a paper by (the legendary duo of) Mike Carey and David DeWitt

"Of Objects and Databases, A Decade of Turmoil" http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/vldb/CareyD96.html

That is worth a read.

>
> --
> Galen Boyer
> It seems to me, I remember every single thing I know.
>
>

<akmal/>

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