Re: ORM or JDBC?
On 03/25/2011 07:24 AM, Michal Kleczek wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
In message<imer88$u0v$1@news.onet.pl>, Michal Kleczek wrote:
Arne Vajh??j wrote:
Most ORM's handle the database specific stuff without the developer
needing to know.
I would say that's a myth. There is no way one can create a system that
is using RDBMS without knowledge about relational databases.
And so we go back and forth in the eternal argument. There is a
fundamental ???impedance mismatch??? between relational databases and
object-oriented programming, and nigh-on 20 years of arguing about it has
still failed to come up with a proper solution.
To be honest I don't think there is any special "impedance mismatch" between
OO programming and relational databases. It is not different than let's say
a mismatch between OO and functional or logic programming. It is just that
some problems are easier to solve in different paradigms and a properly
architected system makes use of this fact and integrates various parts
together. I guess it is just a matter of perspective.
Sure - it would (probably) be better to have a single multiparadigm
language. Such languages exist but are not widely used (Oz is one such
example). Looks like the industry is heading towards this direction with
efforts such as Scala.
On the other hand such a language has its drawbacks as well - the main is
that it is multiparadigm (what a paradox) - so there is no single, coherent
way of creating software in such a language.
Trying to introduce
object-oriented databases didn???t work.
And that is because so called object-oriented databases actually do not
provide a key feature that a database (or rather DBMS) is supposed to
provide which is _sharing_ data (and not just persistence for a singe
application).
The whole OO-RM "impedance mismatch" has its roots in trying to use RDBMS as
a mere persistence mechanism for a OO application.
Basically, databases are a pain to work with in Java.
I don't find working with databases painful at all and I guess a lot of
people (whether they use ORMs or not) would agree with me.
Databases are not painful to work with. I've worked with databases my entire
career. It's the single largest part of my professional activity in Java.
With basic good programming sense and having studied how to use JDBC and JPA,
one should find database programming just fine to work with. The choice of
which one is not affected by "databases are a pain to work with".
That's not to say labor saving is useless. A master carpenter can still
choose to use a power saw where it saves effort over a hand saw, no matter how
great his skill with the latter. But he won't use the circular saw to do
detailed filigree work, nor will he try to fell a tree with a hacksaw if he
has other tools that better suit.
Now, a Dremel makes filigree work faster and easier, but it's not really "a
pain to work with" for the master without the power tool, just a longer job
that way.
--
Lew
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Friz.jpg