[storm] proposal for improvement

[Vernon Cole]

+1
  Write once, use many times.  There should be a single place where
data attributes are defined. Either the class should be the "master"
definition and tables made from it, or the class should be
automagically obtained from some sort of schema or from the tables
themselves.
   If I have to write a description to connect to a pre-existing
table, so be it, but that should be the exception, not the rule.
   I am not a perfect designer. If I need to change (for example) the
number of digits in a column, I should not need to search for all of
the places where the definition is re-defined.  This is one place
where today's software designers don't seem to "get it."

Developers: You may consider the following as a challenge...
In 1981, my team created a 4th generation language where the data
tables were self describing.   If I made a single change in a column
definition, the change was immediately felt in all forms and reports
where that column's data appeared. The data would be displayed
identically on any of seven operating systems on three different
machine architectures, some (PDP-11) having a 60 Kbyte memory space.
If we could do that using stone axes and bear skins, why can't you do
it using SQL and Python?
--
Vernon Cole

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Stephen Waterbury
<stephen.c.waterbury at nasa.gov> wrote:
> Gerdus van Zyl wrote:
>> +1 for adding database properties (eg. length, isnull, etc) as that is
>> something you can't add without modifying storm.
>>
>> The table generation/alter/etc should be a separate project/package
>> however, IMHO.
>>
>> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Eduardo Willians <edujurista at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> + 1 vote for provinding a way to create tables via storm.
>
> -1 for both.  Storm developers' design philosophy is to keep it
> orthogonal to both table generation and more detailed metadata,
> which I think is a good design choice.  Those two aspects
> should be implemented in separate packages.  Zope Schema, for
> example, provides a way to define such metadata (which is
> involved in more than just db schema creation), and its only
> dependency in Zope is Zope Interfaces.  If more metadata than
> Zope Schema supports is needed, Zope Schema (or some other
> metadata definition package) is the right place to add it,
> not Storm, IMO.
>
> Steve
>
> --
> storm mailing list
> storm at lists.canonical.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/storm
>