OO is useful to a degree when it comes to database applications. However, there are a myriad of reasons hey you should push business logic into the database layer.
But before I get to these there is something to be said for implementing abstaction layers by providing interfaces and hiding implementations behind interfaces. You can thing of stored procedures and views in a database as just an interface layer between application components. When you do that, it becomes clear that stored procs and views are just another tool in the arsenal of a well rounded developer.
Back to why you might use views/stored procs. Let's start with complex applications environments. When you're dealing with multiple applications - some legacy, some new, written across a set of technologies - COM, JAVA,.Net, etc. - you cannot guarantee that libraries (if they exist/are comprehensive enough/are general in implementation) are reusable, much less properly reused. In this case it is best to plan for a single/manageable interface set based on views + stored procs you know you can maintain to abstract database schema changes from applications.
In database land you must have consistent, repeatable, up to date data. By housing business logic in the database, you expose to users standard views and procedures that ensure that consistency is maintained between inserts, updates, and deletes. Often these same mechanisms are used to prevent too much access to data. For example, you can preven value that are out of bounds based on expectations of business processes/relationships existing in your database.
Since databases house complex relationships (not uncommon to have to join across 5 tables to get the result you want), to think that the application layer should contain this complexity is to build a fragile system open to errors made by developers who do not fully understand the system, or if so make assumptions about what can/will change in future that are not property grounded.
Continuing, maintainability/business agility is increased with proper use of views/stored procs. If only code is used to access database information, it is much more difficult to update all the destops in your company when a database schema changes than it is to update the innards of a stored procedure with a well known interface. As such any logic that pertains specifically to reading/updating/deleting content from the database should at least be evaluated against a similar implementation that is in the database itself.
So with that you need to take C# in the database for what it is worth - it allows you more easily to define complex business logic (types, behaviors, interfaces) than the comparative T-SQL. As such it speeds development of database applications. It makes database maintenance easier by making the code more easily read/updated. It also lowers the bar to having good database logic by reducing the need for highly complex T-SQL. For these benefits there are drawbacks - portability, perf, etc.
As a professional developer/DBA it is up to you to be able to make these tradeoffs. It is not as simple as saying OO is the right way to go always - that's a purist's approach. Purists have issues in business environments where tradeoffs are required to achieve the expected objectives in the given amount of time and with the given set of resources.
Working on your laptop is a pretty solitary thing. I can either - work on my laptop at home and feel bad, or work on my laptop over coffee at a coffee shop, get a little less done, but meet and talk to people. Quite a few times I've bumped into friends, caught up, etc. at my local coffee shop.
One thing that does seem strange is that if there is a person there working on their laptop that you'd like to talk to, it is somewhat more difficult to start up a conversation.
Why does this come as a surprise? Selection is entirely appropriate given the number of question/caliber of each question/applicability of each question to a broader audience.
Slashdot follows the same approach when we post interviews with key thinkers in the open source community. Why hold Microsoft to higher standard than that to which we hold ourselves?
Remember those ascii games on DOS systems? Or what about Commander Keen on 386 machines? Or what about those cool little race car games with two buttons you buy for 10 bucks at the register in most shopping malls. Now add a GPRS connection to them. You have all the game play you need. Maybe wireless chess will be the next cool app...
You're missing the point. You saw these things come and go in the Western high-tech market. The people who were supposed to be consuming them wanted the Ferrari of a computer to show off to their friends. The people in the 3rd/developing world don't have the same desires. Remember this is the same part of the world where the Police force upgraded from homing pigeons to email just recently (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/18920 85.stm. To someone in the developing world to own a computer is such a world broadening experience these people will snap them up. India is a very educated and education oriented society. Parents there will go to no expense to give their children a leg up. Expect everyone to be toting this around.
What's more interesting to me is the inclusion of GPRS wireless modem rather than 802.11. Meaning this will be a cross-functional phone/PDA replacement with true go anywhere wireless access. Makes me think of busting the 200$ to get one. It won't the prettiest thing, but how often do I need to rebuild the kernel on it from source? All I want to do is read and annotate documents while on the road.
I've long wanted an affordable, totable computer that if I drop it and it breaks, I don't care too much about it. Unfortunately none of the Laptop/Cellphone/PDAs available on the North American market meet my drop it and don't care test. This thing just might.
Automated check? I travel on my 3rd country passport all the time. I'm never asked to list those that I know in the USA. That's absurd. If the TSA wanted this information, they should provide a form to fill in to the airline. Certainly, the security officer should know what statute says such a list must be provided.
This is just like the communist system in the USSR - just tell us who your friends are for your own good - they too will be deported to Siberia.
In Canada, there has been a copyright tax on blank CDs and on MP3 players. Well the supreme court of Canada just ruled these to be unconstitutional in Canada. Though the court has yet to rule on remidies, it is widely expected that refunds of the levy should be forthcoming. Hence statements in the press of late, that if you should decide to buy a media player in Canada, keep your receipt.
If you read the article, you'd have noticed that these folks weren't caught because of Walmart's employees or secret shoppers. Rather the cops stumbled across the loot and the fence they worked with caughed up these folk's names.
The only conclusion - it's still open season. Better scheme than signing up for Amway.
Go ahead take one for the cause. Meanwhile, I'll keep working my way to tsunami/earthquake/you-name-it shelters so we have a viable source of food+water in case sh*t happens.
If you want that photo to last, just use a proven 100 year life time when done on the cheap technology - analog photography.
If you look at the quality that conventional photography has reached over the last 50 years, you'll see that the addition of film + paper + chemicals = years without worrying about pictures fading because of ink issues.
You still have to take care to prevent acidity and UV light hitting your photos - that's why you pay for quality framing, but on the whole, a conventional print will last easily 50+ and now probably ~100 years without deteriorating with nominal care taken.
I'm sure digital will catch up. We'll just have to wait a while to see the results. See you next century:-).
No kidding! Usually they have parachutes or bungee cords or the like attached.
Ok, this is a troll, mark me down for it:-) But I just love how sensationalism works in the media (slashdot in this case). If one person does some particular thing, we have a headline that says, "Some people do a particular thing!!". Oh goodness. Next thing you know you have the FCC issuing fines to a company after 157 letters (155 of which were photocopies) are recieved about a programme that several million people watched. All because, "Some people were offended." Good grief charlie brown. Take a look at politics, someone is always offended.
If we startle everytime someone does something, we'll never achieve anything.
Not to mention he accepts the morale problems that are associated with too much overtime work. What he needs to do is ensure he works you just hard enough so you don't get frustrated and move to another part of the company where things aren't as bad. If the team loses too many people, quality new hires will not join it. And over time, his own job security might be questioned.
The problem is that if there is dedicated funding for this, the cops will wire tap more often.
At least today, they have to compete with other expenses such as cars, maintenance, bullet proof vests for funding. This is a great way to make sure there is scrutiny internally to ensure the power to wire tap is not being abused.
The solar car teams from various universities are race cars - they're designed to go as fast/ far as possible while doing so efficiently. As such they don't have things like bumpers.
In addition they are inspected quite rigorously for safety, including head on crash tests (simulated), before they are allowed on the road. The safety policy is that there must be a lead and chase vehicle between which the car travels. This of course helps protect the car from other motorists.
What is telling in this incident is not the lack of a bumper or its height (it makes no difference since the solar car was T-boned; I read that in a different article).
The car fishtailed - this means either the car was fundamentally unstable to begin with, or the control system was poorly designed so the driver didn't know what to do a blow out happened. If the former were true the engineering team failed in a big way. I don't think that's the case - there are too many checks and balances in solar car design for that to happen. I would say it's the latter. Just like you have to be told many times what to do in case you start skidding in a front wheel vs back wheel drive car and then to really learn your lesson you need to have it happen a few times and try it for your self (notice how many accidents happen the first day it snows). Probably there was no actual training for how to handle a blow out or similar issue while driving the car.
Unfortunatly, that's life. I'm sure the driver knew the risks before sitting down in the driver's seat. Its very sad that this should happen.
The point is the organic crystals used in the e-paper display maintain their color without a current for a significant amount of time. Compared to an LCD, the e-paper takes factors of magnitude less energy to run. Less energy means longer life time for the device.
Yes, eventually instead of those glossy photos in store windows you'll see e-paper which customizes the image based on the gender/age/instant retinal scan, to sell you products faster. But first you'll start seeing this - hybrid devices in applications where an LCD is wasteful.
The lower the DPI, the more strain you have on your eyes/brain when reading. Essentially, your brain has to do pattern matching on the things you're seeing. When the text is jagged (aliased) your both the way your eye traverses it and the way your brain processes it are less efficient. So you spend more energy reading/your eyes get tired faster and you read slower.
The interesting thing here is whether you can change the font to one your eyes have adapted to better. Often I will choose an edition of a book not based on the binding/paper/publisher, but on the font they chose to use. Some fonts, some spacings, some character sizes, ruin my reading speed.
Why scroll? The device is optimized for reading which means you should page. I've been waiting for something like this so that I can finally get around to reading a book from the Project Gutenberg site.
Now if only I could tag strings in the text with annotations (e.g. todo/important/cross-reference), this device might convince me to take the bus to work instead of driving.
I worked on solar cars in University. This 'revolutionary' technology the Dutch firm is using is simplay a hub motor! We've used them for years on the Midnight Sun Solar Car team at the University of Waterloo . Lots of solar cars do - they're very efficient, and no they don't make the car handle like crap.
I don't run and buy the latest technology since I don't have the $Bling$Bling$ to pay for this shit, but I want this one!
Finally, someone understands that laptops for most business users need to be versitile. When I give a presentation using my laptop everyone crouds around and tries desperately to view the screen while I strive equally futilely not to obstruct the view of others as I crane over the damn thing to see what I'm doing.
Until they integrate a high quality wall projector into the laptop I'll take a detachable screen anyday. Now just merge this will tablet PC and I'll have a truely versitile tool I can do cool stuff with.
Slashdot Mirror
OO is useful to a degree when it comes to database applications. However, there are a myriad of reasons hey you should push business logic into the database layer.
.Net, etc. - you cannot guarantee that libraries (if they exist/are comprehensive enough/are general in implementation) are reusable, much less properly reused. In this case it is best to plan for a single/manageable interface set based on views + stored procs you know you can maintain to abstract database schema changes from applications.
But before I get to these there is something to be said for implementing abstaction layers by providing interfaces and hiding implementations behind interfaces. You can thing of stored procedures and views in a database as just an interface layer between application components. When you do that, it becomes clear that stored procs and views are just another tool in the arsenal of a well rounded developer.
Back to why you might use views/stored procs. Let's start with complex applications environments. When you're dealing with multiple applications - some legacy, some new, written across a set of technologies - COM, JAVA,
In database land you must have consistent, repeatable, up to date data. By housing business logic in the database, you expose to users standard views and procedures that ensure that consistency is maintained between inserts, updates, and deletes. Often these same mechanisms are used to prevent too much access to data. For example, you can preven value that are out of bounds based on expectations of business processes/relationships existing in your database.
Since databases house complex relationships (not uncommon to have to join across 5 tables to get the result you want), to think that the application layer should contain this complexity is to build a fragile system open to errors made by developers who do not fully understand the system, or if so make assumptions about what can/will change in future that are not property grounded.
Continuing, maintainability/business agility is increased with proper use of views/stored procs. If only code is used to access database information, it is much more difficult to update all the destops in your company when a database schema changes than it is to update the innards of a stored procedure with a well known interface. As such any logic that pertains specifically to reading/updating/deleting content from the database should at least be evaluated against a similar implementation that is in the database itself.
So with that you need to take C# in the database for what it is worth - it allows you more easily to define complex business logic (types, behaviors, interfaces) than the comparative T-SQL. As such it speeds development of database applications. It makes database maintenance easier by making the code more easily read/updated. It also lowers the bar to having good database logic by reducing the need for highly complex T-SQL. For these benefits there are drawbacks - portability, perf, etc.
As a professional developer/DBA it is up to you to be able to make these tradeoffs. It is not as simple as saying OO is the right way to go always - that's a purist's approach. Purists have issues in business environments where tradeoffs are required to achieve the expected objectives in the given amount of time and with the given set of resources.
oh, just kidding.
Working on your laptop is a pretty solitary thing. I can either - work on my laptop at home and feel bad, or work on my laptop over coffee at a coffee shop, get a little less done, but meet and talk to people. Quite a few times I've bumped into friends, caught up, etc. at my local coffee shop.
One thing that does seem strange is that if there is a person there working on their laptop that you'd like to talk to, it is somewhat more difficult to start up a conversation.
Oh well, still better than working at home alone.
Most guys would just ask her for her number rather than architect a system to atomatically get her phone number from a camera phone photo
Oh, what's the point?
Why does this come as a surprise? Selection is entirely appropriate given the number of question/caliber of each question/applicability of each question to a broader audience.
Slashdot follows the same approach when we post interviews with key thinkers in the open source community. Why hold Microsoft to higher standard than that to which we hold ourselves?
Remember those ascii games on DOS systems? Or what about Commander Keen on 386 machines? Or what about those cool little race car games with two buttons you buy for 10 bucks at the register in most shopping malls. Now add a GPRS connection to them. You have all the game play you need. Maybe wireless chess will be the next cool app...
You're missing the point. You saw these things come and go in the Western high-tech market. The people who were supposed to be consuming them wanted the Ferrari of a computer to show off to their friends. The people in the 3rd/developing world don't have the same desires. Remember this is the same part of the world where the Police force upgraded from homing pigeons to email just recently (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/18920 85.stm. To someone in the developing world to own a computer is such a world broadening experience these people will snap them up. India is a very educated and education oriented society. Parents there will go to no expense to give their children a leg up. Expect everyone to be toting this around.
What's more interesting to me is the inclusion of GPRS wireless modem rather than 802.11. Meaning this will be a cross-functional phone/PDA replacement with true go anywhere wireless access. Makes me think of busting the 200$ to get one. It won't the prettiest thing, but how often do I need to rebuild the kernel on it from source? All I want to do is read and annotate documents while on the road.
I've long wanted an affordable, totable computer that if I drop it and it breaks, I don't care too much about it. Unfortunately none of the Laptop/Cellphone/PDAs available on the North American market meet my drop it and don't care test. This thing just might.
Yeah, it even says "Hi Slashdot" and isn't Slashdotted. We must not even be a blip on the map.
Automated check? I travel on my 3rd country passport all the time. I'm never asked to list those that I know in the USA. That's absurd. If the TSA wanted this information, they should provide a form to fill in to the airline. Certainly, the security officer should know what statute says such a list must be provided.
This is just like the communist system in the USSR - just tell us who your friends are for your own good - they too will be deported to Siberia.
In Canada, there has been a copyright tax on blank CDs and on MP3 players. Well the supreme court of Canada just ruled these to be unconstitutional in Canada. Though the court has yet to rule on remidies, it is widely expected that refunds of the levy should be forthcoming. Hence statements in the press of late, that if you should decide to buy a media player in Canada, keep your receipt.
If you read the article, you'd have noticed that these folks weren't caught because of Walmart's employees or secret shoppers. Rather the cops stumbled across the loot and the fence they worked with caughed up these folk's names.
The only conclusion - it's still open season. Better scheme than signing up for Amway.
Go ahead take one for the cause. Meanwhile, I'll keep working my way to tsunami/earthquake/you-name-it shelters so we have a viable source of food+water in case sh*t happens.
Insightful? This is off topic. What do HOA have to do with non-existant blinking lights on someone's house? Good grief Charlie Brown.
If you want that photo to last, just use a proven 100 year life time when done on the cheap technology - analog photography.
:-).
If you look at the quality that conventional photography has reached over the last 50 years, you'll see that the addition of film + paper + chemicals = years without worrying about pictures fading because of ink issues.
You still have to take care to prevent acidity and UV light hitting your photos - that's why you pay for quality framing, but on the whole, a conventional print will last easily 50+ and now probably ~100 years without deteriorating with nominal care taken.
I'm sure digital will catch up. We'll just have to wait a while to see the results. See you next century
Wow. I never thought I'd go to an URL with yahoo.com in it and look at a UI that looks exactly like a competitor.
No kidding! Usually they have parachutes or bungee cords or the like attached.
Ok, this is a troll, mark me down for it:-) But I just love how sensationalism works in the media (slashdot in this case). If one person does some particular thing, we have a headline that says, "Some people do a particular thing!!". Oh goodness. Next thing you know you have the FCC issuing fines to a company after 157 letters (155 of which were photocopies) are recieved about a programme that several million people watched. All because, "Some people were offended." Good grief charlie brown. Take a look at politics, someone is always offended.
If we startle everytime someone does something, we'll never achieve anything.
Not to mention he accepts the morale problems that are associated with too much overtime work. What he needs to do is ensure he works you just hard enough so you don't get frustrated and move to another part of the company where things aren't as bad. If the team loses too many people, quality new hires will not join it. And over time, his own job security might be questioned.
The problem is that if there is dedicated funding for this, the cops will wire tap more often.
At least today, they have to compete with other expenses such as cars, maintenance, bullet proof vests for funding. This is a great way to make sure there is scrutiny internally to ensure the power to wire tap is not being abused.
The solar car teams from various universities are race cars - they're designed to go as fast/ far as possible while doing so efficiently. As such they don't have things like bumpers.
In addition they are inspected quite rigorously for safety, including head on crash tests (simulated), before they are allowed on the road. The safety policy is that there must be a lead and chase vehicle between which the car travels. This of course helps protect the car from other motorists.
What is telling in this incident is not the lack of a bumper or its height (it makes no difference since the solar car was T-boned; I read that in a different article).
The car fishtailed - this means either the car was fundamentally unstable to begin with, or the control system was poorly designed so the driver didn't know what to do a blow out happened. If the former were true the engineering team failed in a big way. I don't think that's the case - there are too many checks and balances in solar car design for that to happen. I would say it's the latter. Just like you have to be told many times what to do in case you start skidding in a front wheel vs back wheel drive car and then to really learn your lesson you need to have it happen a few times and try it for your self (notice how many accidents happen the first day it snows). Probably there was no actual training for how to handle a blow out or similar issue while driving the car.
Unfortunatly, that's life. I'm sure the driver knew the risks before sitting down in the driver's seat. Its very sad that this should happen.
The point is the organic crystals used in the e-paper display maintain their color without a current for a significant amount of time. Compared to an LCD, the e-paper takes factors of magnitude less energy to run. Less energy means longer life time for the device.
Yes, eventually instead of those glossy photos in store windows you'll see e-paper which customizes the image based on the gender/age/instant retinal scan, to sell you products faster. But first you'll start seeing this - hybrid devices in applications where an LCD is wasteful.
The lower the DPI, the more strain you have on your eyes/brain when reading. Essentially, your brain has to do pattern matching on the things you're seeing. When the text is jagged (aliased) your both the way your eye traverses it and the way your brain processes it are less efficient. So you spend more energy reading/your eyes get tired faster and you read slower.
The interesting thing here is whether you can change the font to one your eyes have adapted to better. Often I will choose an edition of a book not based on the binding/paper/publisher, but on the font they chose to use. Some fonts, some spacings, some character sizes, ruin my reading speed.
Why scroll? The device is optimized for reading which means you should page. I've been waiting for something like this so that I can finally get around to reading a book from the Project Gutenberg site.
Now if only I could tag strings in the text with annotations (e.g. todo/important/cross-reference), this device might convince me to take the bus to work instead of driving.
You should watch the Canadian version of COPS.
I worked on solar cars in University. This 'revolutionary' technology the Dutch firm is using is simplay a hub motor! We've used them for years on the Midnight Sun Solar Car team at the University of Waterloo . Lots of solar cars do - they're very efficient, and no they don't make the car handle like crap.
I don't run and buy the latest technology since I don't have the $Bling$Bling$ to pay for this shit, but I want this one!
Finally, someone understands that laptops for most business users need to be versitile. When I give a presentation using my laptop everyone crouds around and tries desperately to view the screen while I strive equally futilely not to obstruct the view of others as I crane over the damn thing to see what I'm doing.
Until they integrate a high quality wall projector into the laptop I'll take a detachable screen anyday. Now just merge this will tablet PC and I'll have a truely versitile tool I can do cool stuff with.
My 2Cents.