I strongly disagree with the idea that persistent object storage should be totally transparent. Normally this translates to your first option, syncing the database on every set() method call. Even if you do a bulk set (multiple fields at once) this means you need to do the same for the get(), otherwise you've lost the goal of having each object represent what's in the database right now. It may be necessary in some scenarios but I haven't programmed in any of them, plus it's both a database and network nightmare.

Instead, push the decision on when to save back on the user of the object. Yes, having a load() (or fetch()) and save() makes serialization visible. Good! The user always knows what's being done with the object and when a save is appropriate. I've taken this tack with SPOPS and it's seemed to work well. And SPOPS has an option to refetch the data for an object from the database, in the case that you have long-lived objects.

I might as well pipe up with a tangential opinion: I don't think there should be separate 'create' and 'update' calls for objects, just a 'save'. Do you really care which is being done?

Chris
M-x auto-bs-mode

In reply to Re: OO Perl & RDBMS Strategy Question by lachoy
in thread OO Perl & RDBMS Strategy Question by DamnDirtyApe

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.