RE: ODMG - Mailing list pgsql-general

Besides, OO has it's moments, but I've yet to be convinced that it's a viable step in evolution.  Apart from high-speed OID implementations, I'm not sure that they gain that much.  Certainly, there are no features like stored procedures, views, rules, etc. and the query interface is rudimentary, and immature.  Of course, maybe I'm tarring a lot of good products because of my limited experience, but I've had a reasonable look at two supposed market-leaders, and I'm completely underwhelmed.  The only way to manipulate data is to instantiate it, which is outside of the database process.  And besides, I'm still waiting to see an OODB that can index a complex number ;-) or an IP address.

I like the idea of OR databases, the problem thus far is that, apart from PG, there are no good implementations of OR.  All the commercial implementations are just plain poor.  They may perform certain functions well, but they are not complete, and that's no good.

I suspect the time is near for PG to worry less about relational adherence, and start leading the OR drive.  It's positioned better than any other player in the market.  Not to say that relational is not important, it's still most of the market, but that market is shifting, and OO databases are only niche products.  There is a whole huge market out there which really needs OR, there is only one real contender, and that contender is more focused on basic relational functionality.  Of course, PG really needed things like DRI, and there are still some things that are required before the team can say "Been there, done that, got the T-shirt", but perhaps starting to think about OR positioning wouldn't hurt.

Perhaps a good OID implementation would be a good idea, but apart from that, the rest of OODB is fancy footwork, which I'm not sure would significantly benefit us, without us losing a whole bundle.

Cheers...

MikeA

>>   -----Original Message-----
>>   From: The Hermit Hacker [mailto:scrappy@hub.org]
>>   Sent: 13 October 2000 01:27
>>   To: Aristide Aragon
>>   Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
>>   Subject: Re: [GENERAL] ODMG
>>  
>>  
>>   On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Aristide Aragon wrote:
>>  
>>   > I was wondering...
>>   > Are there any plans to include ODMG support for psotgresql? ...
>>   > Or does anybody know of an open source ODMG DBMS?
>>   > It'd be cool if besides being object-relational, postgresql were
>>   > object oriented too!
>>  
>>   From my understanding, based on a long, and informative,
>>   conversation with
>>   Thomas last week, it doesn't sound like its possible to be
>>   both OR *AND*
>>   OO at the same time.  We can implement some OO features,
>>   but, at least the
>>   way I understood it, to go fully OO would mean removing
>>   the whole OR ...
>>  
>>   If you, and/or a group of ppl, want to work on OO features
>>   that can be
>>   merged in *without* affecting the OR base, plesae feel
>>   free to do so
>>   ... we even have a mailng list (pgsql-hackers-oo) setup
>>   for discussing
>>   this issue, but other then a few threads when it was first
>>   setup, it kinda
>>   grew dead :(
>>  
>>