Posted by Kenneth Downs on 01/24/07 12:56

Frank van Wensveen wrote:

>
> For example, if I'm rummaging around in a MySQL database, the table
> structure and the code that generates the SQL requests are often
> interrelated. Restructure your table(s) and you have to update your
> code accordingly.

Exactly. The database and the code are not only interrelated, they are
married, or perhaps they are blood brothers, they can never be separated.
The code has to know about the structure of the tables.

There are two solutions to making this manageable. The historical solution
was the use of library code and data dictionaries. When OO mania came
along we got involved in the Viet Nam of software engineering: ORM.

I have tried both and found the classical solution to be far more practical.
The real difference in approach is that the classic solution requires a
little abstract thinking, while the ORM approach leads to a lot of ad-hoc
table-by-table coding.


--
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
(Ken)nneth@(Sec)ure(Dat)a(.com)

[Back to original message]