On Monday, March 20, 2017 at 8:41:36 PM UTC, Martin Norbäck Olivers wrote: > > > The reason I was thinking about it was not actually anything to do with >> garbage collection. I have a data modelling language with a type system, >> but it has grown in a slightly ad-hoc manner and needs some >> rationalization. I was wondering how well the type alias records + tagged >> unions + basic types part of Elm would suit my purposes. As the data models >> I build are often mapped onto relational database or mutable objects, I do >> need circular references to be possible. >> > > I don't see the rationale for requiring circular references to map onto a > relational database though, they are referenced by key, not by pointer. >
This is true. Its more for the object side of the mapping where both sides of a relationship may hold a reference to the other. Also for the data modelling side, where I want to be able to describe that 2 entities have a bi-directional relationship. > Mutable objects can of course use circular references, and some algorithms > depend heavily on them, but they are a pain to handle for instance when > serializing. Which you do a lot in a web app. > Yes. This is a big part of what I do with these data models - figure out a good default mapping of a relational model onto chunks that can be serialized. Based on applying a set of heuristics to the data model. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Elm Discuss" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
