RE: [GENERAL] Future of PostgreSQL

On Tue, 28 Dec 1999, Howie wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Jeff Duska wrote:
>
> > [SNIP]
> > Java support in the database?
> > Just about all the current db have support for Java in the database.
>
> ... which isnt where it belongs.  java is (barely) an applications-level
> language, not a systems-level language.

It's getting better and faster, but I'm not going to start that debate :-)

Lets just say that there are some sites out there that use server side
Java, and it's running virtually at the same speed as native code...

> let your app treat the data it gets from a rdbms as an object/entity,
> not vice versa.  i think javablend from Sun does something like this (
> creating objects from rdbms data ) and im positive NeXT/Apple's
> Enterprise Objects Framework does this. GNUstep's 'DBkit' ( or
> whatever its called ) does the same thing, but is based on EOF1.0.
> its a much, much nicer approach to the whole issue, not to mention
> quite a bit more flexible and portable.

There are many different techniques available. In our own driver we have a
simple Class Serialization model that maps Java Classes onto PostgreSQL
tables. It's simple, but it works.

However, I think Jeff was thinking of a PL/Java scheme, where you can
write a Java class that was callable from an SQL statement. Not everyone
would want this, but if they do, it would be an option they could compile
in.

The scheme I had in mind was to have a single JVM started by the
postmaster using JNI, and when a backend is started and first requests use
of a Java method, it starts a thread in this JVM and that thread then
remains for the lifetime of the backend servicing requests.

> > [SNIP]
> > Internet
> > Oracle, IBM and other have all kinds of different Internet technologies such
> > as portable version of the database -- XML, HTML export and imports,
> > CORBA/Application Server type support.
>
> would be rather trivial to write an export app that dumps the data into
> html format.  in fact, psql does this already.

I'd prefer XML, as its more general, and you could represent HTML as a
subset.

It would be a doddle to write a tool to build an XML DTD based on a
postgresql database.

Peter

--
       Peter T Mount peter@retep.org.uk
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