Re: [Webware-discuss] MiddleKit versus ZODB

[Ian B. <ia...@co...>]

On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 09:37, Edmund Lian wrote:
> I have a question... please don't get offended by it, I don't mean it to be
> offensive...

No one should be offended by such a question...

> While I'm not a great fan of object oriented DBs, I do see a role for them
> in providing persistence when the demands of an application are lightweight
> (and don't require all the good stuff that relational DBs offer). I was
> reading one of Kuchling's write-ups about ZODB and ZEO last night
> (http://www.amk.ca/zodb/zodb-zeo.html), and was wondering why people use
> MiddleKit instead of ZODB.

I would have answered like Chuck answered, so I won't repeat that.  But
I'd add that I think ZODB is about as much like an RDBMS as a file
system is like an RDBMS.  They all store data, and in various ways they
can all be used for persistence.

A *lot* of people use Zope with a RDBMS.  There's benefits to both of
them, and certain places where one works better than the other.  Most of
the places where Zope uses ZODB, a Webware developer will be using a
file -- storing servlets, config files, maybe pickling data that's
resistent to normalization, etc.

While you could use ZODB with Webware, I don't think it fits into
Webware's style.  It's this opaque persistent pile of objects, where 
Webware components are usually fairly simple, avoid interrelation where
they can, and are recreated on demand.  Classes persist in Webware --
and they persist just fine as Python source -- but instances are
ephemeral.

  Ian