[Laszlo-dev] For your review: Laszlo Database API spec

[phuduc nguyen]

Hi Max,

It seems like you've put quite a bit of thought and
work into this spec. However, I think providing such
an API is a step in the wrong direction. Forgive me if
this sounds pompous, but I strongly disagree with
making DB dips from the GUI. 

This reminds me of my first job as a web developer
where I had to maintain a preexisting webapp. All the
code existed in one layer. The HTML was mixed with
Perl/CGI and SQL. All the business logic,
persistence/DB access, connection pooling, and GUI was
woven together. It was a nightmare to maintain and add
new functionality. 

If I've read the spec correctly, then you're proposing
an API that would enable DB access from the GUI. This
means you're putting GUI, business logic, and DB
access into one layer. This is effectively a 2 tiered
application where the 2nd tier would be some form of
remote data source (DB for example). From an
architectural and design perspective, 2 tiered apps do
not provide enough layers of separation to promote
flexibility and evolution of an application. What
happens when you want to change just the look and feel
of the app? You'll increase your chances of
introducing bugs and changes to the business logic
because the layers have not been separated with clear
lines of responsibilities. 

These days, most commercial webapps have at least 3
tiers if not 5 or 6. I'm not talking about blogs or
homepages where you show your family, your dog Fido
and then talk about what you did last Tuesday. This is
in the context of real world apps that are critical to
the success of an organization. Could you imagine
trying to maintain a webapp the size of an amazon.com
with a 2-tiered architecture? It just doesn't make a
lot of sense. I'd love to see OpenLaszlo gain more
momentum and acceptance among the developer community,
but such API's would not add progression to the
platform. 


thanks,
Duc




--- Max Carlson <max at laszlosystems.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'd like your feedback on the attached spec.  The
> notion is to have a 
> common REST API for Laszlo to read form and
> communicate changes to 
> remote data sources.  The plan is to create a
> special Laszlo dataset 
> that knows how to speak this protocol and can
> automatically sync with 
> the back-end.  The first implementation will likely
> be in PHP and 
> support SQL databases such as MySQL.  Later
> implementations could be 
> built on other platforms - I'd love to see one built
> on Rails.  It's 
> important to note that the protocol is designed to
> be general enough to 
> work with any data source that has sets of records -
> it's not 
> necessarily tied to SQL databases.  I look forward
> to hearing your 
> thoughts and feedback!
> 
> Regards,
> Max Carlson
> OpenLaszlo
> > _______________________________________________
> Laszlo-dev mailing list
> Laszlo-dev at openlaszlo.org
>
http://www.openlaszlo.org/mailman/listinfo/laszlo-dev
> 


		
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