Re: [NTLK] Developer Soup question

From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 08:24:05 PDT


Aux environs du 28/04/04 ā 11:44 -0700, sous le titre "[NTLK]
Developer Soup question", Will Hartung prit sa plus belle plume pour
écrire les mots suivants:
>What do you think of Soups? Do you like them?

Yes.

>Favorite feature?

Union soups.
Complex queries.

>Is the ability to simply store an arbitrary frame in a soup valuable
>compared to having to set up a schema?

One doesn't have to update the schema whenever a new class of data is
added. This is a key feature of the NewtApp framework (one can extend
any NewtApp application with new stationeries).

>Are managing "inter soup" aliases a
>problem?

No. Plus we can have N-N relations.

>At a glance, Soups seems to give a flexible ISAM storage system, without
>having to worry about table definitions etc, but not quite making the leap
>to being an "OODB", notably when you try and store a Frame graph of items
>that may already be stored in a soup (which makes the system simpler).

Don't forget that Newton data are not trees but DAGs.

>I notice that indexes are typed ('slot 'string), what happens if the slot
>value is not the same type as specified in the index, will the index skip
>it?

I guess so.

>Any idea why the number of tag's on a soup are limited to, what, ~600?

What do you call tags?

>I'm just curious as someone who has seen them from afar and what folks who
>had to manage them thought about them as a storage mechanism. Do you think
>in hindsight a mini-SQL like system would have been more flexible and easier
>to use?

Frankly, no.

A big feature of the storage system is that data does not appear as
flattened or serialized anywhere. You can pass an entry from a soup
to a function and it wouldn't notice (unless asking the system) that
it's a soup entry and not a frame in heap or in a package.

Paul

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