Re: How are OO databases doing

From: Christopher Browne <cbbrowne_at_acm.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:57:33 -0500
Message-ID: <87lkwcwiua.fsf_at_wolfe.cbbrowne.com>


Clinging to sanity, "Arturo Hernandez" <arthernan_at_hotmail.com> mumbled into her beard:
>>OO "databases" are just network model databases in new clothes. The data
>>model is clumsy, inefficient and difficult to work with.
>
>>It's no surprise the market rejected them.
>
>
> I share your opinion on network databases. If we look at the problem
> from a broader perpective. Development on the client is still done with
>
> OO langages. And for developers like me it is still a pain not to have
> an integrated technology. So why the disconect? Why did OO databases
> fail in the market?

The trouble with the OO databases was that they generally were clumsy; possibly more clumsy than the ways they attached to SQL databases.

Furthermore, portability immediately goes out the window, from several perspectives:

  1. You're commonly tied to one language, either C++ or Java
  2. Modifying object types is liable to provide versioning problems (CORBA always had plenty o trouble with this), so that data structure changes will be deeply tied to the applications
  3. Standards more talked about than observed...

It strikes me that of those, #2 is likely the really troublesome part. There's a return to the "brittleness" that IMS and ISAM applications always suffered from.

-- 
"cbbrowne","_at_","gmail.com"
http://linuxfinances.info/info/slony.html
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-- dedmonds_at_aw.sgi.com (Dean Edmonds)
Received on Wed Feb 15 2006 - 19:57:33 CET

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