There are two parts on this problem. One is the workflow of the document (which document, who sent it, whom what it send to) and another is the content of the document which may or may not need to be schema free.
1) The document itself if it needs to be schema free can go in a mongodb and there is no need for the DAL apis. 2) The workflow information can can be handled by the DAL whether you want to use a sql database or mongodb. I still do not understand what kind of integration you are asking for. If you are asking for the ability of the dal to db.table.insert() fields that have not been declared in advance then why not use the mongodb api directly? This would only make sense if different noSQL have very similar functionalities (like different SQL databases are very similar) and you need an abstraction layer on top of them. The problem is that they do not. The differences exceed what they have in common and will only get in the way. SQL is a standard and apart for minor syntactical differences all SQL databases follow it. NoSQL is not a standard. Massimo On Friday, 24 August 2012 19:26:28 UTC-5, apps in tables wrote: > > > The example that i can think of is the workflow of documents. > list of users, list of documents and list of document types, > each user can > > send a document to one or more users > receive a document > reply to a document (sent doc is linked to the received one) > > forward the document > > comment on a document > > sign a document > > approve or disapprove a document > > > document types have variable layout > some document types have list of items > the approval/disapproval can be at the document level or the item level > > I think schema-free is the most appropriate one for the example. > > --
