Friday, January 18, 2008

Relational vs. OO Databases

I found this ACM Queue article interesting:

A Conversation with Michael Stonebraker and Margo Seltzer

The most interesting part for me was the rumination on "Why did OO (object-oriented) databases fail?". I worked on the "Oracle Database Application Developer's Guide - Object-Oriented Features" back in 8i, and heard the mantras about how OO would kill off relational. Previously, back at IBM, I was involved with C++ coding, learning C++ from GOF member John Vlissides, RIP. Then I saw as IBM moved into Java, a lot of code that I felt misconstrued the idea of object orientation, and a lot of instructional material that I felt was kinda lacking. (A car and a truck are both kinds of vehicles; now build a class hierarchy for handling events in a GUI. :-)

So, I was interested to see Stonebraker's take on the potential market opportunity for OO database, and pragmatic reasons why it didn't take over the world.

I have in mind several more blog posts on various aspects of object orientation and how it plays out in database and non-database contexts.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Dan Weinreb, co-founder of ObjectStore (and of Common Lisp fame) recently wrote a blog entry responding to that paper, too. He still calls them a success, though reality never caught up to the bold marketing statements (see "The Hype" in his article).