Blake wrote:
In just about any professional desktop development tool today, the process of displaying DB data in form or grid format is nigh automatic. I can do it without a line of code, and I can do it even if I've never seen the tool in my life.
Any "professional desktop dev tool" or any RAD tool. Ins't the same.
You say ODBC and ODBCEnh "help with this", so I try to install ODBC and get the expected "no published package" followed by the not surprising: "Error occured during install: Not a GZipped stream". And yet, even if
Unfortunately this is a common question installing packages that aren't up to date, but the most of times the installation is possible after a time of experience dealing with with Squeak, packages and so.
I could get it to install, I'm positive that generating a simple data entry form or grid would not be trivial and would most certainly require coding. Most likely it's not something I could manage in the first week of using Squeak, much less the first hour.
Squeak isn't a tool to be dominated in 2 weeks, nor in 2 months.
Working full with Smalltalk require a time, at least in my experience. The full power of Object Technology (not only object oriented) need a time. Smalltalk and RAD are opposites I think. Smalltalk is a tool with others goals more than RAD.
I disagree. OO programming is perfectly capable of modeling an RDBMS. (I may be hallucinating but I thought I read an essay by Alan Kay embracing both RDBMS and ODBMS. If so, I hallucinated a really sensible thing.<s>)
The relational model certainly has its limits, but it also has its uses. And it's not to Squeak's credit that it makes a chore out of reaching out to other tools.
My point is that exactly Smalltalk is the best suited option to NOT have the need of use relational DBs. If a programmer has payed the costs of learn OT (aka Smalltalk), then have no sense (IMHO) get tied to relational DBs.
Cheers. gsa.