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Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:08:22 -0700
From: "Roman V. Shaposhnik" <rvs@sun.com>
In-reply-to: <5d375e920904181513v680abdd0x15991abd87e89843@mail.gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Message-id: <1240783702.25846.60.camel@goose.sun.com>
References: <5d375e920904170531w7d6992ebvee1698d46e668f25@mail.gmail.com>
	<0f1e54b186151c0eecc0003c812124f7@quanstro.net>
	<5d375e920904181513v680abdd0x15991abd87e89843@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] web server
Topicbox-Message-UUID: f27a8800-ead4-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 00:13 +0200, Uriel wrote:
> My criticism was directed at how they are actually used in pretty much
> every web 'framework' under the sun: with some hideously messy ORM
> layer, they plug round Objects down the square db tables, and all of
> it to write applications which really are representing files (accessed
> over HTTP).

I'd say that the biggest reason for DB overuse by Web folks is the
fact that this is how they get persistence for their data while
still being able to build distributed applications.

In general, there are only two ways of having persistent data:
   * DBs
   * FSs
(well, ok, there's third these days)

FSs (under most OSes) have been way to clunky in the presence
of any kind of distribution. Hence the DBs.

> So by using files to store and model data not only avoids having to
> map a fs-like interface to a table oriented one, but the object
> oriented convolution in between.
>
> And that is short is what allows you to write a blog engine in three
> lines of rc, because rc and the rest of the toolkit that comes with it
> are designed to work on and with files and file paths.

FSs have a bit of a downside in how they make everything look like
tree structures. This is not that big of a deal when you can have
truly dynamic trees, but I still haven't seen how werc takes care
of that.

Thanks,
Roman.