On Sat, 10 May 2008 19:45:57 +0200, Rob Rothwell wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I was just wondering if anyone knew what work would be required to  
> provide a
> threaded ODBC connection in Squeak similar to what is available for
> VisualWorks or Smalltalk/X.  The ability to not freeze the VM while  
> running
> a query would be very useful for me, but I don't even know where to  
> start.

Out of curiosity, what would it be that you intend to let the users do  
while longish queries are tickling the db?

I ask with this background in mind: over several years I headed a team of  
developers who produced 1.5 releases/year of a  
(fat+GUI)client<->(shared+fast)db server app with between 6 and 60 GB data  
etc, 50+ installation sites (institutions with their own db server) and  
100+ users, with 98% of the db data being updated over night  
(incrementally). We brought down the app's db response time from minutes  
to seconds but still never found any reason for using non-blocking  
queries, because nothing much was there that could have been done by the  
user in the meantime.

Do you just want to see non-freezing queries running or have some other  
reason for that need?

/Klaus

> Or, is it a bigger issue than just ODBC, something buried deep within  
> the VM
> and/or the FFI?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rob