Questions about IceFreeze.

[OrNot]

hi,there,
The following questions may virtually belong to the subject of database and not very suitable to be asked here,
but I think the man who designed the freeze must be a specialist of database and hope getting some helps.

1) Freeze is a very powerful tool but unfortunately ,for the time being, do not support other database systems such as mysql and oracle. I know there exists a class library named Hibernate and want to combinate it in our project with ICE. I am not sure if this strategy is convenient and easy to implement because not familar with it at all.

2) So far as Freeze, supposing that we have a database table and can give the corresponding slice definitions and then produce the class by slice2Freeze, it is ok to do what we want to do with the map. Now, if we allow the client to add a field to the table, we must run the slice2Freeze and recompile our codes again. I want to know, if there are some ways to allow table changed but without redistributing the applications. For example, user can print some info such as name, age and tel. number, now we allow the user to add a email address and print it out in addition.

Thanks in advance -OrNot

[matthew]

I don't really know what the question is in item #1.

As for #2 it depends on what the purpose of the new data field is, and your application design.

What does your application do with this data other than just collecting and storing it? How does the field get added (ie: new field in a GUI?)

If you do computations with the field you must have some way of adding it to the application logic -- which generally means changing the code, or providing some sort of scripting logic to your customer.

Without knowning more about the application design and goals its hard to give a concrete answer.

Assuming that you don't want to do all that much with the data then you could keep a sequence of string/string pairs in the database record which are used for extensible fields.

Regards, Matthew

[OrNot]

hi,Matthrew,

1) Hibernate (http://www.nhibernate.org/) seems famous in that it can construct a map from database to OOP classes by
configuring XML files and make user operate on these classes. Its ideas seem like the freeze but I cannot say much becuase I do not know it at all. we want to use it only because we have to deal with various database systems.
2) Actually I am in a mess about this question .
Please allow me to hold this question and ask it later. So sorry. Anyway, thank you very much.

OrNot