Re: What is Pick anyway?


David Cressey wrote:
<snip>
> How does the Pick model translate into an environment where many application
> programmers, possibly working for entirely separate companies, all write
> data into a common database?

Can you give an example of an application where there is not a single
company or organization that controls the integrity of a database? I
have been curious about this before because the answer to your question
is that your implication is correct -- you would never want to have a
free-for-all where multiple companies use the PICK API directly. You
would use a more service-oriented approach where one company controlled
all services writing to the database.

I don't doubt that this is a requirement somewhere, but I have never
seen a situation where multiple companies must write directly to a
database without one of the companies controlling the integrity. So,
I'd be interested in an example.

> Doesn't the implicit coordination that results
> from "the programmer and the DBA are the same person" break down in that
> circumstance?

No, it really doesn't. You might identify one developer as responsible
for a data access layer and have others use that proprietary API to get
consistent error handling and such. Each developer would still prepare
any schema changes, however. The reason this works is that the schema
is less brittle than in a typical SQL DBMS. It is quite easy to extend
the schema for new purposes without harming anything there already.
This is related to the weak typing.

> How can the DBA or database designer of a Pick or UniVerse
> database protect the programmers from each other?

Programmers typically have standards they agree upon and libraries
(sub-routines) they agree upon, but just like JavaScript and other
duck-typing languages, the programmer is given enough rope to hang
themselves. The flip side is that I have never had a more productive
team of developers than those working in PICK. The risk must be
weighed, but for almost all typical sets of data processing
requirements, I am quite sure I would get higher productivity from a
team of professionals developing in PICK than most other environments.

--dawn

.

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