This happens a lot in metalogical business modeling frameworks. My shop
produced one such product, and we are using two others that are produced
by other companies. These are used for problems that are not amenable
to traditional relational analysis and modeling tools.

It's not so much "wily nilly" as an admission that the business that the
application supports is subject to either frequent changes or heavy and
intricate customization. The metalogical framework means that
modifications to the production system typically will not require a
programmer's skill set so much as a business person's skill set.

A prime example is a contract monitoring engine for a company actively
seeking new customers. Every contract is similar, but not sufficiently
so to be amenable to in depth relational analysis in the classical IT
sense of the word. Our data modeling team (aggregate experience of
about 60 years) admitted one such problem was not relational after about
a year of concentrated effort.

You use this approach when the relational constructs you end up with are
horrendous, but the metalogical constructs are simple and easy to pass
on to a non-programmer.

On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 23:24 +0000, Adam wrote:
> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Robert martin <rob@c...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > Thanks for the quick replies guys. The issue is that the procedure
> does
> > and drop and recreate of each field in the table (just because it
> is
> > easier). The idea is that SP fields would not be modified at all.
> >
> >
> > Rob Martin
> > Software Engineer
> >
> > phone +64 03 377 0495
> > fax +64 03 377 0496
> > web www.chreos.com
> >
> > Wild Software Ltd
>
> Rob,
>
> I have never seen a situation where willy nilly DDL changes are
> possible by the customer except by poor design decision. That does not
> mean that there is no such case, but possibly if you tell us what you
> are trying to do, we may be able to come up with a method where
> constant DDL changes are not required.
>
> Also FB limits the number of times you can alter an object before it
> gives some errors and you need to backup / restore.
>
> Adam
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Alexandre Benson Smith wrote:
> >
> > >Robert martin wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >>Hi
> > >>
> > >>We have an issue where clients can add their own custom fields to
> our
> > >>database (any data type). They can also edit these field types,
> say
> > >>changing from 10 to 15 chars.
> > >>
> > >>We have a problem where the alteration process causes an error due
> to a
> > >>stored procedure (and probably a view) that is based on the
> particular
> > >>field exists. Is there a way to
> > >>
> > >>a) Detect a dependency and not alter the field.
> > >>b) Easily disable a stored procedure and later re-enable.
> > >>
> > >>TIA
> > >>Rob
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >To detect the dependecie is easy ! just look on rdb$dependencies
> table.
> > >
> > >To recreate the SP is a bit more complex.. since the SP cuold have
> other
> > >SP's that depend on it and so on.
> > >
> > >You could alter the Sp to an empty body, and then recreate it.
> > >
> > >But I think it is a bit dangerous, what about if the SP has a
> declared
> > >variable as varchar(10) and then your costumer change the field to
> > >varchar(15) ? how would you detect this kind of change ?
> > >
> > >see you !
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
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