[orm-devel] Re: ORM

[Admin]

On Fri, 2002-12-06 at 10:09, Diedrich Vorberg wrote:
> Hi Uwe,
> 
> for a moment I though you to be Austrian, with that German name and 
> all. But after checking I figured you're not only across the Alps but 
> even Down Under... 

Yep, you guessed it I'm German. At least I was when I was borne. I've
been down under since I was 2. My parent emigrated, I didn't get a vote.
snip...

> >	Can orm be used to create the tables based on the column defs?
> No. Mike Watkins sent a program in that goes the other way 'round and
> creates orm's class definitions from the SQL layout. Check the 
> contrib/ directory.
> 

Are there any plans to implement this.  I can see numerous advantages in
the python class being able to create the tables if required.  Table
versioning (MODIFY TABLE) could also be implemented allowing the source
to control the data.  This was one feature that I would have loved as
data structures were always morphing over time and having to manhandle
the restructuring of data is always painful.

> There's no such thing as a silly question, just silly answers. You 
> have nearly as much programming experience as I am old ;-) If there 
> is any advise or suggestions from your side, I'm eager to hear them! 

Age is only a number. Experience broadens your view but also makes you
cynical. I've seen this industry move from simplicity where almost
anyone could pick up programming to a complex array of technologies
where programmers are having to specialize. I've worked with most
languages (Assembler, C, Basic, Cobol, Fortran, Forth, Pascal, Ada,
PL/1, Clipper, Clarion and more) at one time or another and I find
Python to be one of the most elegant.

I'm going to have a play with orm and I'll pass on whatever I can. 
How about CREATE TABLE and MODIFY TABLE handling?

> BTW: what are 4GL's?

4GL's were all the rage around 20 years ago and included packages like
Clarion, FoxPro, Clipper, 4D and many others. Some are still evolving
and quite popular although they are proprietary (evil?). They are 
mini-languages, that incorporate as much functionality in the base
language as possible. Clarion for instance handled screen IO (UI) disk
IO (database) and business logic in a language that was a mish-mash of
Pascal, Cobol and Basic. They were never real fast but they did the job.
With Clarion I wrote a complete integrated multi-user accounting system
in 2 months and a Point-of-Sale add on for it in 8 days.  Both packages
are still in daily use.

My next trick is to rewrite my packages using Python as Open Source, 
and set them free. 

I look forward to using orm in this process.

Yours,
Uwe.