Re: OO and IBM z series COBOL was Re: Discussions of COBOLphilospphy

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:24:40 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood@removethis.ent
ernet.co.nz>
wrote:

>Going for stored procedures is a conceptual shift.
>
>Conceptually it says: " I have this repository with my data on it. Now I'm
>going to make it more than just a data storage entity, I'm going to make it
>"smart".
>
>Instead of building the "smartness" into application code, it is inherent i
n
>the database. The DB is smart enough to provide information derived from an
y
>number of tables, it can "relate" fields so that when one field is updated
>somewhere, another field (or fields) derived from it, or connected to it, i
s
>calculated (maybe even in another table) and updated also. The opportunitie
s
>are almost infinite.

If it were designed well, it wouldn't need to be smart because it wouldn't h
ave any
dependencies (except keys). It would be in normal form.

The exception is reports, which can be kept up to date automatically by mate
rialized
views.

A GOOD use for triggers is leaving audit trails. When triggers, rather than 
applications,
are used,  the audit cannot be bypassed by utilities such as SQLPLUS and TOA
D, nor my
misbehaving applications.