[Pycon2005-attendees] Pycon2005 and database divide (ODB vs relational DB)

Lloyd Kvam python at venix.com
Sat Mar 26 19:17:36 CET 2005


I was not present at the Pycon presentation that triggered some heated
discussion about the relative merits of an Object Data Base vs a
Relational Data Base, but I did see some followup discussions and there
were some emails.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pycon2005-attendees/2005-March/000054.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pycon2005-attendees/2005-March/000061.html

Personally, I use relational databases because of the set theory that
underpins them and because that's what I know (old dogs do old tricks). 
The discussions that I've seen on this list generally deal with the nuts
and bolts of using relational databases.

I've viewed Zope's ability to take a bundle of html and programming
logic and save it as a persistent URL in ZODB as a cool trick, but not
terribly relevant to the way I write applications.  (Yes, I know that is
selling Zope short, but I think it is still true enough.)

I have persistent program logic (.py files) and persistent data in SQL
databases plus configuration files and presentation templates that help
tie the pieces together.

Has the world changed?  Is it now easy to apply set theory predicates
(or some alternative theory) to ODB data?  Should "normal" applications
be managing "objects" rather than "data"?

I'm posting this to db-sig since that seems like the best forum for a
discussion.

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp



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