Mikey Likes It

With all too infrequent frequency, one finds a coder-centric babbler who gets RDBMS. This one (and it's earlier entry) are well worth reading (not hot off the presses, but a link in this Artima post). Nearly all of it is old hat to relationalists, but, I guess, still novel to kiddie koders. Oh well.

In the earlier set, is "2. Processing data in Java memory" wherein he advises:

... So in fact, by moving OLAP to the database, you gain two things:

Simplicity. It's probably easier to write correctly in SQL than in Java

Performance. The database will probably be faster than your algorithm. And more importantly, you don't have to transmit millions of records over the wire.

I have always added: "and doing the work in the database means the data is agnostic to client platform, OS, language, or anything else; only that it supports sending SQL requests (for any definition of 'send')".

A number of his 20 recommendations boil down to this: do as much processing on the database, and leave only formatting and input capture to the client. With (nearly) universal 4G bandwidth, even running VT-X00 style client/server apps is now feasible; populate them thar pick-lists in realtime, pardner. Talk about disruptive technology!!

They, the koders, won't do it of course, since they view the world through Dollar Colored LoC glasses, and ceding to the database that which is the database's reduces their LoC landscape. "You'll have to pry this keyboard from my cold, dead hands!" Yeah, I will.