Glorp and ReStore Experiences

Hi,

I have finally got the opportunity to write an application using
Dolphin. I will need to store and retrive data in an Access db. I've
looked at the info for ReStore and I have to say, that it looks very
impressive. Plus, the fact that ReStore works with mySQL is also
encouraging.

I've also had a brief look at Glorp and it looks quite good too.
However, glorp clearly isn't finished but it is free, so my questions
are:

 * Is Glorp usable as it stands?
 * If it is, will it work with Access?
 * Finacial considerations aside, what would be the preferred solution
for expericenced Dolphin Developers?

BTW, does Dolphin XP use ADO or ODBC to access databases?

Thanks
--
Cheers

Barry Carr
Ixian Software Components Ltd
Blairgowrie
Perthshire
Scotland

Barry,

> I have finally got the opportunity to write an application using
> Dolphin. I will need to store and retrive data in an Access db. I've
> looked at the info for ReStore and I have to say, that it looks very
> impressive. Plus, the fact that ReStore works with mySQL is also
> encouraging.

MySQL is a good thing.  I was forced to admit to having some problems a
while ago, but have since resolved them.  Some of the trouble was apparent
random failures that I now suspect were confusion over which database
connection was in use - it is fairly easy to change the datasource
configuration w/o reconnecting =:0   Beyond that, I found MySQL to be
remarkably slow doing some queries that Access did with barely a click of
the hard disk.  On further examination, it appears that Access was quite
aggressively optimizing HAVING clauses.  Why did I use HAVING when WHERE
would suffice?  I used Access' query designer to create a prototype query,
then copied the SQL and then modified it.  Access used HAVING, and I never
thought about it.  MySQL was clearly building the cross product, querying it
and then rejecting results not meeting the conditions - Access pretty
obviously did something more clever.  It's either vendor lock or innovation,
depending on your perspective.  Rewriting the query to use WHERE and adding
some obvious indexes left MySQL flying through the data.

BTW, DuBois' book is highly recommended.


> I've also had a brief look at Glorp and it looks quite good too.
> However, glorp clearly isn't finished but it is free, so my questions
> are:
>
>  * Is Glorp usable as it stands?
>  * If it is, will it work with Access?
>  * Finacial considerations aside, what would be the preferred solution
> for expericenced Dolphin Developers?

The only help I can offer is to mention that the latest Glorp version might
not be complete.  If you go back some, you can find a package with completed
ports.  You can also grab Squeak and install Glorp from Squeak Map to give
it a try.


> BTW, does Dolphin XP use ADO or ODBC to access databases?

Either, though I've used only ODBC with a home-grown mapper.  I think of
relational databases as excellent indexers that are often mistaken for data
storage systems :)   However, I live in a world of databases stretched to
(beyond??) their limits, and so must be able to connect to arbitrary
schemas - that left out ReStore.  If you use Glorp, please let us know how
it goes.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

"Barry Carr" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:c2lfm8$dp4$1$[hidden email]...
I don't have experience with Glorp.  When I last looked at it, a bit over a
year ago perhaps, it did not seem complete.  If you want to use an existing
table structure than ReStore would not be appropriate (it depends upon
making its own tables).  However if you are free to define your own tables
then ReStore is great because it does it for you based on the object
structure.

I have been using ReStore since it was first released.  I love it.  I am
using it for the database of my company's main product.  I have not had any
reports from users of problems with it.  Once it is configured it seems to
be very reliable.  Early on I encountered some small bugs in ReStore.  John
was very quick to fix them.  I also had some suggestions for additional
functionality.  John had it implemented a few days latter.  I was really
very impressed at the level of support he provided.  The cost of ReStore was
not an issue since it would have cost more for me to implement and test my
own DB code.  It is also nice to know I can support a range of databases.
We currently use MS Access because the drivers are included with Windows (or
for older versions can be installed by MDAC 2.5).  I like knowing that we
can always scale to SQL server if needed.

If you do a google search of this group with my name and ReStore you can
find my review and lots of other comments.

> BTW, does Dolphin XP use ADO or ODBC to access databases?

Dolphin XP supports both ADO (via ADODB_Connection) and ODBC (via
DBConnection).  It originally only offered ODBC.  My general feeling is that
it is _easier_ to get better performance from ADO than ODBC.  To get good
performance from ODBC you will need to precompile queries, which becomes
another design consideration.  The current version of ReStore uses ODBC,
however it handles the precompilation of queries on its own.

Chris

Hi Barry,

>
> BTW, does Dolphin XP use ADO or ODBC to access databases?
>

I'm using ADO to dump significant amounts of data into an Access database
without any problems. This database is used by other people to do
statistical analysis. For my own use I write the same data in an OmniBase
database, as that makes it far easier to retrieve the data as Smalltalk
objects.

HTH

Ted
www.tedbracht.co.uk

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your responses. I've decided to take a look at ReStore
and try and use that.

Ted, in an ideal situation I would have done as you suggested and used
OmniBase. However, the client will need to run queries from the data
and add-hoc reports so I'll have to stick with Access :-(

Thanks, once again

Cheers

Barry Carr
Ixian Software Components Ltd
Blairgowrie
Perthshire
Scotland