Re: Loading Classes from Tables

Walden H. Leverich wrote:
>> If IT is writing the class, then they can handle the deployment.
> David, I'm surprised, you're thinking like an in-house IT person, and
> not like a software developer. <G>

I've been both places ... as an IT person, I would certainly balk at a
non-standard classloading scheme.  Especially if I had to work with the
generated classes.

As a software developer, I would avoid creating a system that is
difficult to maintain and deploy.  K.I.S.S. is my favorite acronym.

  What if it's not IT, but rather a
> 3rd party that's writing the classes? 

Someone is writing the classes and someone is deploying them.  Even if
they are deployed to a database table instead of a file system, they
have to be loaded somehow.  IMHO, it would probably far easier and more
straight forward to deploy the classes on a file system rather than
trying to manage them in a database.

>> No, just include all the question types in the jar 
> Different clients, different jars -- yuck.

Well, the classes have to come from SOMEWHERE ... no matter what you are
going to have to maintain a different code base for different clients.
If it's not a different jar file, then it's a different database entry.

Of course you can just give all clients all the available classes.
Unless the classes are custom for each client.  But then your back to
the first problem ... you have to manage each clients code somehow.

If the goal is to have different web controls for various functions ...
then you might want to look at some kind of template engine where you
can alter the template in order to pick up the customizations.

I guess my main question at this point is this ... how are the classes,
that would be stored in a database, being generated?  Do you have some
system that generates the bytecode directly ... or are you writing java
source, compiling it, sending the classes to the client, and loading
them into the database?

david