All this talk about DataBases

[Lynn Fredricks]

> But for larger projects, and especially projects where you 
> need to be able to provide support to many users, it's 
> imperative to separate the business logic from the data. You 
> can still do this using RunRev stacks, just have the stacks 
> hold only the data, and you move it from card to main 
> interface stack. Once this separation is achieved, it's much 
> simpler to choose whatever format you would like to store 
> your data in, be it cards, custom props, text file, SQL 
> server, MySQL, altSQLite, Valentina, etc.
> 
> One huge advantage of using an external databsase like SQLite 
> is the ability to store data outside of RAM. HyperCard used 
> to use a non-RAM based design, but Rev stores everything in 
> RAM. So, if you have an address book which has 100,000 
> records in a single stack, then all the records would need to 
> be stored in RAM simultaneously, creating performance problems.
> 
> Plus, there are a number of huge advantages of using real databases.
> Concurrent users, real transaction management, stored procs, etc..

I strongly agree with Chipp - of course I have some interest in databases
with Valentina. An application development environment really has to be able
to do everything, yet it cannot be good at everything. By storing data in a
database, you can leverage capabilities that offer greater protection,
speed, implementation options and sophistication specific to the storage of
data. This has little to do with the actual development tool in particular -
xCode, Visual Studio, Revolution, or whatever.

Isolating you data from your GUI means you have much greater control over
how your data is interacted with - reducing the opportunity for mishap. A
lot of corporate IT departments view this as common sense.

Later you might want to further isolate the business logic as well in such a
way that it makes it easier to modify, improve, replace - making your
applications much smarter and scalable. This is an area where I know folks
like Chipp and Jerry have a lot of experience so they probably have more
real life examples of the hows and whys.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

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