[Seaside] How do you handle constraints on persisted collections?

Boris Popov boris at deepcovelabs.com
Tue May 19 22:05:52 UTC 2009


Although, if two users are updating their usernames in separate transactions (say, in GemStone), this would do nothing to prevent both of them from succeeding, thus, this type of constraint checking really only applies when adding users to a collection which would stop this from happening by virtue of a commit conflict, no?

-Boris

-----Original Message-----
From: seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Michael Forster
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 2:59 PM
To: Seaside - general discussion
Subject: Re: [Seaside] How do you handle constraints on persisted collections?

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Pat Maddox <pat.maddox at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to make the leap from RDBMS/ORM thinking to pure objects,
> and am running into some problems.  The first is how to handle
> constraints on collections, when the objects inside of that collection
> are mutable.  Quick example, ensuring that only one user exists with a
> certain username.  It's trivial to check that a username is available
> before adding the user to a UserRepository.  If a user can update his
> own username though, it'll bypass any check on the UserRepository and
> invalidate that constraint.  A couple options...

Two aspects.

First, expressing the constraint itself, to which you alluded.  In
loose Relational Model parlance you're talking about a table
constraint, specifically, a key constraint.  From the OO perspective,
I think of these as constraints on the class.  However, I implement
them as instance methods to allow reference of the instance itself
and, thus, use of a single method for both insert and update checks.
For example:

MyClass>>checkUniqueName: aString
    | count |
    count := self repository count: [ :each | each name = aString and
each ~= self ].
    (count = 0) ifFalse: [ self error: 'Constraint violation: ',
aString, ' is not unique.' ]

Second, where to send the constraint check message.  For updates, I
just send it as a guard message in every accessor that mutates the
variable in question.  For inserts, it depends on how intimately you
tie instantiation and insertion. #checkUniqueName above works
correctly whether the instance is already in the repository or not.

Cheers,

Mike
_______________________________________________
seaside mailing list
seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside


More information about the seaside mailing list