Re: [Modus-devs] Collections of content objects and performance

[Sean A C. <se...@co...>]

On Friday, Nov 1, 2002, at 06:48 US/Pacific, Jeremy Firsenbaum wrote:
> Sean - I've jumped into this thing in midstream, so I'm wondering what=20=

> you're referring to when you say "our system."

Oh, sorry. Macromedia. Well, my team at Macromedia. We prototyped a=20
persistence mechanism that was pretty similar to what Modus tries to do=20=

(and was what Nathan was referring to in one of his earlier messages=20
when he named me).

> I appreciate your concern with the descriptor mixing display=A0and =
data=20
> attributes.=A0It seems like a=A0few of the items in the descriptor =
right=20
> now are there just to make renderSimpleForm() work and may be=20
> superfluous to the actual object model.=A0

Yes, I'm not convinced that it is possible to build a generic=20
form-rendering engine (without a huge amount of machinery) and I feel -=20=

very strongly as y'all might gather! - that this sort of display=20
machinery doesn't belong in a content model. What if your display is=20
Flash? WML? XML?

> As for=A0clustering the XML descriptor for a group of objects I would=20=

> say no. I think it's legitimate to reference other objects within a=20
> descriptor ( a forum has threads), but the descriptor should continue=20=

> to describe one content type. It seems cleaner and much more=20
> manageable to have separate forum, thread, and message descriptors=20
> than to wrap them all together in one mega/meta-file.

OK, just wanted to get a sense of the folks here on that one.

> <cfset forum =3D=20
> createObject("component","path.to.forum").init(attributes.forumID)>
> <cfset threads =3D forum.getObjects('threads')>

Just to clarify: the init() call would not instantiate/retrieve the=20
subobjects, that would only happen on the call to getObjects(), yes?=20
That was part of the problem we had with performance: if the first=20
init() call created the entire object (i.e., including nested=20
subobjects) it became very slow very quickly.

> =A0=A0<field=A0name=3D"related"
> =A0=A0=A0=A0label=3D"Related Press Releases"
> =A0=A0=A0=A0type=3D"org.bacfug.modus.fields.contentObject"
> =A0=A0=A0=A0multiple=3D"yes">
> =A0=A0=A0<objectType name=3D"modustest.contentObjects.pressRelease"/>
> =A0=A0</field>=A0=A0
>
> So this is an array of modustest.contentObjects.pressRelease? What has=20=

> "type=3D..." got to do with this? What value has the type got to do =
with=20
> anything?

I'm still confused by this XML example - it seems very strange to have,=20=

effectively, two types specifies for this field... Nathan, can you=20
elaborate?

"SOAP is not so much a means of transmitting data
  but a mechanism for calling COM objects over the Web."
-- not Microsoft (surprisingly!)