> > And if this mega-provider is ever implemented, what will be a
> > reason of using other providers directly? Why not pass all queries
> > through it?
> >
> That a possibility.

It certainly is, and those that are too lazy to study history are
bound to repeat its mistakes.

It would be good to study the Oracle experience and the Ingres
experience. Have a look at, for instance:
http://www.cc.utu.fi/static/ingres/STARUG.PDF
for an example of Jim's mega-provider, and at for instance:
http://www.lc.leidenuniv.nl/awcourse/oracle/server.920/a96540/statements_56a.htm
for an example of going the rse route.

At one point in time, the Ingres folks were building Star as a
separate project. Then they belatedly figured out that Star actually
contained >80% of the code of a regular Ingres instance and they
reverted to building it from the same code base. A bit like we build
Classic and Super from a single code base.

If one thinks it through, it soon becomes apparent that "building a
mega-provider" and "solving it at the rse level" actually results in
much the same code design.

So the whole debate around Jim's argument simplifies to:
- which presentation to the user is easier to understand
- is calling back into the provider chain from a regular server (using
all the proper interfaces) 'breaking the architecture' (as compared to
calling back into the provider chain from a special mega-provider build)?

Paul

BTW, where did the "quadruple in complexity" insight come from? Do you
have any references for that insight?