Re: Supporting applications that need a database

[John Sisson]

David Jencks wrote:
Dain has been complaining that the default database is no more and 
IIUC suggesting that we reinstate it and by default hook at least ejb 
applications that don't have an explicit database configuration up to 
it.  Since I removed the default database I'd like to somewhat 
preemptively explain my thinking.

Based on my support experiences with another app server that did 
something like this, I think this is a really bad idea.  What happened 
there was that no one knew how to connect their app to a non-default 
database, and we got zillions of problem reports based on the app 
using the default database rather than the one that was misconfigured :-)

I also don't think that encouraging all applications to use the same 
database is a very good policy.  It certainly invites collisions 
between applications and reduces portability.

We have the capabilities to build a derby database for a particular 
schema, and package it , and to bundle a datasource configuration with 
a j2ee app plan.  This is used for the daytrader and uddi server 
configurations.  Rather than including a database no one should want 
:-) and encouraging people to use it, I would rather see us automate 
the construction of a configured database for an app, and the 
construction and bundling of a datasource configuration with the app's 
plan.

thanks
david jencks


I agree that it is preferable to automate the construction of databases 
rather than encouraging users/apps to use a default database.

For demo type applications, complete automation of the creation of the 
database at deployment time would be nice. 

For non-demo applications deployed in an enterprise environment, the DBA 
would probably want to be involved in the creation of the database and 
possibly customize the DDL, security etc. 

John