On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 08:25, Andrew Ho wrote: > Notify and listen are not standard SQL (e.g. SQL92). Therefore, I think > it is a terrible idea to use it - if you care about using GnuMed with a > different database backend.
We can't use a different database backend anyway, sinc we heavily depend on stored procedures for all sorts of triggers, which is not portable. Notify and listen is an absolutely *essential* feature for a complex database accessed and modified by many users simultaneously. How else would a client get to know that the record he is displaying right now just has been modified by another client? Think of a "waiting room" widget on the doctor's interface. The receptionist pops a patient who has just arrived onto the "waiting list" table, and now the doctor's screen has to reflect it. How would you do it without notify/listen? Poll in regular intervals? That would generate a huge unneccessary backend traffic and would make programming the client a lot more complicated, since there are virtually *hundreds* of tables where such asynchronous backend communication is needed. That said, there was another main reason why PyPgSQL was chosen as "the" adapter: ease of installation. Especially our typically less knowledgeable Windows user is usually unable to install anything that doesn't come in a "setup.exe" version. Horst --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by SURFSIDE INTERNET]
