Re: Writing apps for ORDBMS

Elein --

Do you have plans to have your work in progress focus on a specific
database like PostgreSQL or are you shooting for a generic approach of
ORDBMS App writing?

I'm curious to know because I can find very little out there on the
subject.

I am _not_ a DB guru, but I have recently put together a very large-scale
app and web portal that uses PostgreSQL in the back-end. However, as
stated in my original post, I do not use any of the object-side
capabilities of the DB.

The question that hit me was, why? But before I start down this road, I'd
like to explore any existing info on the subject; in my case, as it
specifically relates to PostgreSQL.

I'd be more than willing to (eventually) write a paper on the topic, but
I'm basically starting from ground-zero and need to know where to start.

Thanks for the tip on "The Plumber's Guide".

Rgs,
Aurangzeb

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, elein wrote:

:
:Oh, yes, there is controversy. I have Date&Darwen's rants as
:well as Stonebraker's. And I have found that sometimes practicality
:overrides all arguments. I hope to take this practical slant in the book.
:
:But in the interest of disclosure, I've worked for three
:(or two, depending on how you count) Stonebraker companies, ingres,
:illustra and informix. For anyone who didn't already know, Michael
:Stonebraker was one of the professors running the ingres project and
:the main one running postgres at UCBerkeley. He co-founded Ingres
:(aka Relational Technology) and Illustra (which was acquired by Informix).
:
:elein(at)varlena(dot)com
:
:On Monday 20 January 2003 12:35, Mike Mascari wrote:
:> From: "elein" <elein(at)sbcglobal(dot)net>
:>
:> > This is the primary topic of my book in progress. (Don't
:> > hold your breath, but I'm working on it...)
:> >
:> > I also recommend "The Plumber's Guide" by Paul Brown,
:> > however all of the syntax comes from the informix 9 implementation
:> > of ORDBMS which diverged from its conceptual postgres roots.
:> > It also describes features which are specific to informix 9 and
:> > are not relevant for postgresql.
:> >
:> > elein(at)varlena(dot)com
:> >
:> > On Monday 20 January 2003 10:51, Aurangzeb M. Agha wrote:
:> > > Is there a white-paper or something out there on how to write apps
:> > > which take advantage of the object-relational features of ORDBMS's?
:> > >
:> > > I'm using PostgreSQL right now, but I'm using it as a relational DB,
:> > > meaning that I'm not taking advantage of, to my knowledge, any of the
:> > > object capabilities of the DB.
:> > >
:> > > I've looked at techdocs but not found anything to my liking.
:>
:> There is also a bit of a dispute going on as to the value of the object
:> "models" that have thus far been put forward. Date & Darwen argue in
:> "Foundation for Future Database Systems", that the "relvar = class"
:> equation is the DBMS world's "First Great Blunder". They argue that domain
:> inheritance, which is orthogonal to the relational model, has merit but
:> that relation variable inheritance (such as that implemented in PostgreSQL)
:> does not.
:>
:> Mike Mascari
:> mascarm(at)mascari(dot)com
:
:

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