Re: newbie queston: why would anyone use Oracle?

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:04:35 +0000, PJ6 wrote:

> I was taught that the procedural paradigm does not belong in a relational
> system.

Actually, you were taught wrong, whoever might have been teaching you. There are situations in which you want to implement simple procedural logic: if the customer doesn't have enough money on the account, abort transaction. Log the attempt in the activity table. It is a short "if-then" logic which can be masked with complex data types, for no apparent benefit. Furthermore, there is one crucial problem with the OO stuff: interoperability. Classes are types and the logic is hidden ("encapsulated") in the class definitions. Relational databases, like 3GL languages, have very simple type structure: NUMBER, DATE, CHAR, and VARCHAR2. That's it. It was designed for portability. As soon as you introduce variable types, databases stop inter-operating. Purist OO solutions are a religious practice, not a practical programming methodology. In the real world, one needs simple 3GL things to do simple things in a simple way. That is PL/SQL, simplicity itself.

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