Head on MagmaCollection

[Chris Muller]

> I would like to use it seriously in a pet project. It is a kind of
e-learning application composed of two blocks: a local morphic
application with pedagogical activites and a distant data base
repository. The two applications could be on different network location
> on the Internet.

Hi Hilaire, it sounds like a really cool project which would benefit greatly from MagmaCollections.  The standard collections can of course be used in domain models but if they grow beyond a few hundred count then performance can suffer a lot.  Further, concurrency issues can arise among these "popular" collections that multiple sessions want to add to frequently.  (This could be improved for Sets and Dictionary's but, notwithstanding, MagmaCollections are still best for large).

If you have not explored MagmaCollections yet you should know they provide Magma the much of the benefits of relational databases without losing its ODBMS transparency at all.  Central to this philosophy is the fact that the where: syntax, for quickly creating subsets of massive collections is, in most cases, identical to standard select: block syntax (see the Swiki page for details about this).

A lot of work has gone into making MagmaCollections work well and fast, and they do indeed.  If you have any questions about them please, of course, feel free to ask here.

  - Chris