> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 00:13 +0200, Uriel wrote: > > My criticism was directed at how they are actually used in pretty much > > every web 'framework' under the sun: with some hideously messy ORM > > layer, they plug round Objects down the square db tables, and all of > > it to write applications which really are representing files (accessed > > over HTTP). > > I'd say that the biggest reason for DB overuse by Web folks is the > fact that this is how they get persistence for their data while > still being able to build distributed applications. > > In general, there are only two ways of having persistent data: > * DBs > * FSs > (well, ok, there's third these days) > > FSs (under most OSes) have been way to clunky in the presence > of any kind of distribution. Hence the DBs.
i agree that this is the general line of thinking, but i think option #3 is missing. there's lots of ephemerial data that doesn't make sense to keep in a database even if you have one. if you do cc processing, some of it may be unwise to let the cgi see or illegal to store in a database (example: the verification code from the back of a credit card). so i always thought it made sense to have a session server to deal with these problems. we kept the connection information fit to keep in the filesystem. that was pretty easy. - erik
