On Wed, 30 Aug 2006, Nigel Hamilton wrote: > HI Darren, > Generally I really like the idea of fixing the relational/OO > mismatch problem by swallowing the relational model whole. :-) > But I wonder if we are ready to say goodbye to the tyranny of disk > seek? How will your proposed system use the disk? And if it does use the > disk what about pesky problems like: indexing, locking, seek time etc? > The days of limitless RAM are yet to arrive - until then databases > must rely on the disk - what is the plan for storing the data? > NIge
While it is true that the broader design I am addressing should do away with any relational/OO impedence mismatch, since a complete relational model would by definition handle data types of arbitrary complexity (unlike many of today's pseudo-RDBMS products), I am certainly not proposing doing away with the disk. Rather, the proposal is focusing on what users of these data structures would / could see. The idea is that relational structures have the same ease of use and flexability that things like hashes or arrays or sequences or sets do now. They can of course just be stored in RAM like the aforementioned, when the working set of data is appropriately small, but just as a hash-doing class can have a disk-tied implementation as well, for scalability and/or persistence so can a relation-doing class. And this is one main reason why Relation etc is a role rather than a class, so people can choose how it works. -- Darren Duncan
