Recently I read an article demonstrating how you can use SQL Server capabilities to translate HTML to SQL and back again. Web site contents could be pushed into SQL Server, parsed, and database manipulations exercised. In return, the database could take table contents and translate it back into HTML. I thought the whole thing was a cool exercise. I also thought that it wasn’t really practical.
For the first few years of Client/Server development we performed the same design in reverse. The client would call the database and translate the results for the user to manipulate. Once complete, it would translate the client code into database syntax and push the changes back.
Very few systems, and those generally prototype or small applications, follow that pattern today. Why? Because you are tightly coupling persistence with presentation. That has so many ramifications I don’t have space to elaborate. What concerns me even more was the comments on the editorial had nothing but praise, and worse yet, thanks for a solution they needed. Have we learned nothing in the last few years?
I feel like the Robot on the old Lost in Space TV series running around shouting, “Warning! Warning! Warning!” I don’t mean to debase the editorial. I feel pain when I put a lot of time into writing something and get slammed for my hard work. What I am concerned about is that many of the readers thought the idea was a good one to do anything other than an academic exercise.
I’m not ready to get back into another series on the SOLID principles of software development. I do keep them ever before me, and don’t violate them without good cause, not because something is cool.
What do you think? Have I turned into Joe Celko? Tell me where I’m wrong with your comments or Email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben