dmaclean@zog.EBay.Sun.COM (Dave MacLean) (01/20/90)
I have been tasked with identifying promising technologies for future software development of applications in manufacturing (does this sound at all familiar? :-). As such, I am considering OOPL's as well as OODBMS's. The number of C++ products in both areas indicates a significant trend. While I am very impressed by Eiffel, I would very much like to have OO database capability without the impedance mis-match problem of 2 langauges. Does anyone know of an OO database that uses Eiffel? Note that I am not particularly interested in relational databases. - dave dmaclean@Ebay.sun.com Sun Microsystems Milpitas, CA
simpson@saturn.ind.trw.com (Scott Simpson) (01/23/90)
In article <1082@male.EBay.Sun.COM> dmaclean@zog.EBay.Sun.COM (Dave MacLean) writes: > >I have been tasked with identifying promising technologies for future >software development of applications in manufacturing (does this >sound at all familiar? :-). As such, I am considering OOPL's as well >as OODBMS's. The number of C++ products in both areas indicates a >significant trend. While I am very impressed by Eiffel, I would very >much like to have OO database capability without the impedance mis-match >problem of 2 langauges. Does anyone know of an OO database that uses >Eiffel? Note that I am not particularly interested in relational >databases. I don't think relational databases and object-oriented languages such as Eiffel mix that well together since RDBMSs have such limited typing capabilities. You probably are better off using object-oriented databases for your persistence. Last year I was using an OODB from Ontologic that used an extension of C that was completely seamless, i.e, the persistence part was an integral part of the language you programmed in. You didn't have to make library calls or include funny preprocessor statements in your code to make things persistent. Since then Ontologic and a number of other OODB companies have embraced C++ and thrown out their seamlessness for sake of true C++ compatibility. Persistence is now done by library calls. This discarding of seamlessness is de-evolution due to market forces. I asked Tim Andrews, the Vice President of Ontologic, if they were willing to make front ends for other languages such as Eiffel since they had a relatively language independent back end. He said if there was sufficient interest in the market for an Eiffel front end, they would write one. We can just sit back and see if an Eiffel front end to an OODBMS pops up. In the meantime, we can suffer along with Eiffel's STORABLE mechanism. P.S. I asked Tim what language he liked best and he said hands down Eiffel was the best language around. I don't know if I totally agree with that statement but it is interesting to see such a statement from somewhat so active in the OODB community. Scott Simpson TRW Information Networks Division simpson@trwind.trw.com