From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,a875d9649dde34e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!cyclone.bc.net!news.uunet.ca!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GWindows and a future home for it References: <10lr18i6h426o82@news.supernews.com> <87vfdutlg2.fsf@insalien.org> In-Reply-To: <87vfdutlg2.fsf@insalien.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:12:07 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1098378725 198.96.223.163 (Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:12:05 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 13:12:05 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5587 Date: 2004-10-21T13:12:07-04:00 List-Id: Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Chris Humphries writes: > >>A GUI library should just be for GUI stuff. >>A DB library should just be for DB stuff. > > I agree. > > From what I read in this thread, GWindows.Database can be split away > from GWindows, so that the issue of database is made orthogonal to the > issue of the GUI - this is the Tao of Programming. > > There are, to my knowledge, three free DB libraries in Ada: GNADE, APQ > and GWindows.Database. I don't know enough about all three to decide > how much they overlap, but they certainly do. I leave it as an > exercise to the reader to decide if this is worth a vote :) I am going to stick my neck out here to David's benefit without actually looking at his Database support. Based upon what I have seen from Delphi and even MFC's database support, you _do_ need to integrate the two to some degree, if you want to reduce the enormous amount of grunt work that is involved (Microsoft's MFC approach uses a lot of C++ macro glue). Yes, you can make the two totally separate, but this comes at an incredible cost. It means that every time you bring up a screen full of new column data, every stinken widget now must be coded for to transfer from the query to the widget. When you want to save changes, or save a new row of data, you have the reverse issue. You must code for every stinken widget to get values from widgets to the database for the update/insert operation. Very very messy and time consuming. Surely there is a better, less error prone way. So I applaud efforts like David's, to make this a whole lot easier and transparent. I never got into Delphi in a big way, but I could see the advantages of their approach, from my past exploratory experiences with it. Delphi did allow you to specify how to load a combo control for example, from a database table. Simple to talk about, but very gruntish to code for every widget. So I would suggest to anyone that thinks that the GUI and DB can be totally separate, to go and write a simple update screen with 15 or so I/O widgets containing values. You'll come away with that experience thinking "there has to be an easier way". I believe that is the direction that David is going (or has been). You should reconsider what you are asking for. ;-) -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg