Shawn, while I applaud the concept of finding a way to plug a MV database in where a SQL database might otherwise be ensconced, one problem with the attempt is that while the storage itself is a different animal, more so is the access. Most of these types of apps that "rely" on a SQL database do so because the data access code is a bunch of SQL queries. And while most MV platforms provide some type of SQL compatibility, that compatibility negates much of the benefits of the MV environment (i.e. nested data sets, etc.), single reads, etc.
A while ago I did a proof of concept for a design that used PHP objects to provide pluggable access to Unidata, Universe, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. While I'm sure more talented others have taken the concept much farther than I, the more important problem in all this is that it's inventing a new data access method that isn't MV and it isn't SQL. Moreover, when coding something like this to be compatible with the least-common-denominator, often the end result is the very definition of "least". Personally, I think the read/write/delete model of MV is head and shoulders better than the select/insert/update/remove model in SQL. So my efforts were invested on providing a simple read/write/delete model on top of a generic SQL db. But what I found was that there is no "generic" SQL. MySQL and PostgreSQL in particular are two completely different animals when it comes to insert/update. And all this ripples down to the issue of advisory locking and the other niceties that we tend to take for granted with MV. On the flip side, I am of the opinion that indexing and query optimization are generally much better on SQL. I do wish more SQL implementations supported virtual/derived/correlative fields. This is another of those wonderful things in MV that we tend to take for granted. I am all about finding ways to integrate MV into the larger technology landscape. But right now I believe the two worlds are so far apart that a general purpose application of one technology into the other camp is still problematic. _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
