What to expect from Valentina Cocoa?

[Ruslan Zasukhin]

On 12/9/05 6:41 PM, "Philip Mötteli" <philip.moetteli at econophone.ch> wrote:

>> In short answer to your questions is:
>>     Valentina is set of classes for different APIs
>>     (C++, C#, RB, Lingo, Obj-C now)
> 
> Actually, my question is: How much transparency does the interface
> for Objective-C to Valentina offer?

As the FIRST STEP -- Justin finish now STANDARD Valentina API,
    which we have for all our products.

> Complete transparency would be, that I just send the following to any
> object, without the need of any model at all:
> 
> [someObject becomePersistent]; // Embedded DB
> 
> [someObject becomePersistentWithName:FOO onHost:aHostName]; //
> Client server model

I see what you want.

Tell me please, this is WHAT you DREAM about ?

You do not want care about db structure and else?
But only put/get objects?

Hmm, most probably this can be implemented.

> This should be the one and only line I should have to write in my
> program. Just one line. All the objects that are referenced from that
> "root" object should automatically become persistent (persistency by
> reference). 

Actually even OO DBMS give you ability mark --
    this class/attribute will be persistent, but that no.

So generally speaking, ROOT object should pull all child objects that marked
as persistent. Right?

Okay I see.

> Every change to such a persistent object should be  automatically propagated
> to the DB (propagation by mutation). This  needs some Aspect Oriented features
> of the programming language  (bindings).

> Basically, the code never knows, if it's dealing with a transient or
> persistent object.
> 
> Smalltalk has that. And it would be possible in Objective-C, because
> Objective-C offers enough structural (so, no need for a model) and
> behavioral reflection to implement such an interface too.

Yes I agree that this can be possible in Obj-C, because as I have hear,
I can ask Object about its type structure, attributes and values. Right?

So yes, I can then do:

- aha, this is some new object TYPE for this db,
    so I need create new table to keep it.

- aha, this TYPE already exists in db, so I just add rows into table.

> PS: With CoreData we lag a lot more behind this ideal, than we were
> with EOF.

I see Philip. So you dream in fact about OO DBMS.

Valentina is not going to be such db in near time I afraid.

We position self as Object-Relational. Although I should say Valentina have
some features that OODB use, e.g. OID field. As always Valentina do this
even more effective than others, because Valentina use ZERO disk space for
OID field and its index in contrast to other OO DBMS.

Also I tend to think, that IT IS POSSIBLE to develop on Valentina basis a
layer which will do OO DBMS.

Generally speaking such layer can be built on any RDBMS db I think.
Although pure OO DBs claim that they

a) allow variable number of attributes/columns for entity/table.
        RDBMS don't

B) keep data not normalized in tables, but as single objects
    IMHO weak advantage. I see much more problems here than benefits.

But again IMHO, Valentina is better than RDBMS for such task, because it
have much flexible storage of data than RDB. And the same LINKS, can play
excellent role here.

In ideal, I'd like that THIS task -- OO layer around Valentina -- develop
somebody else. :-)

-- 
Best regards,

Ruslan Zasukhin
VP Engineering and New Technology
Paradigma Software, Inc

Valentina - Joining Worlds of Information
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

[I feel the need: the need for speed]