Catching up on all the activity around Torque and V4.0... It occurred to me
that we might want to
make sure "What Torque Is" before we get lost in the all the details...
Especially concerning
functionality to drop or add.
What I mean by "What is Torque?" is the ideal "elevator pitch" that describes
Torque. For
anyone not familiar with this term, Wikipedia say:
"An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or
project. The name
reflects the fact that an elevator pitch should be possible to deliver in
the time span of
an elevator ride"
At my work, we occasionally have people involved in project generate a project
"elevator
pitch" as a group. It's often amazing how many different viewpoints people
really have
about something the group thought they had a common understanding about.
However, once we get a good short description, this then becomes a touchstone
to refer
to when ideas are proposed.. e.g., this Idea enhances this.. or telling
someone an idea
doesn't map to the project (or convincing folks to expand the project).
I think Torque would benefit from us defining such a statement to help frame
what Torque
4.0 is working towards.
That said, my personal elevator speech for Torque is:
Torque is designed to simplify using SQL data in Java applications across
all the common SQL
database servers. It allows for rapid development, while supporting the
full application life
cycle.
Torque is based on modeling your data schema in XML. Torque uses this XML
to generate
the Java objects needed to access your data via it's runtime component. In
addition,
Torque can generate the SQL needed to create the underlying DB and supports
setting up
the initial data your applications might need.
This means development is faster because you concentrate on defining the
underlying
data, then quickly start using the Torque generated objects to work on the
business
logic.
It assists in the application deployment phase with its generated SQL
scripts and initial
data setup capabilities.
Finally, it helps in the maintenance phase in several ways. For example,
the XML schemas
make it easy to identify changes between versions. Torque's method of
defining SQL in
the code helps identify problems with tables or columns that have been
dropped or
renamed.
OK... it was a LONG elevator ride...
Thoughts, comments, objections, et. al.
Greg
Greg Monroe <[email protected]> (919)680-5050
Learning Technologies Group - Solutions Team Lead
Duke Corporate Education, Inc.
310 Blackwell St.
Durham, NC 27701
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