Re: Commitment Control (was: Modernizing applications (was: Explaining single level store tonon ipeople))

From: "rob@xxxxxxxxx"
You may write outstanding code. And you may have something
there on the millionth of a second. But you have to assume that
some strange things may happen ...

I already indicated that I plan on using commitment control with journaling for GL Journal Entry. It seems to me that one of the advantages of IBM i is that business can consider the circumstances, decide which tables are worth journaling, which transactions must commit (or rollback), or whether journaling and commitment control may be obsessive. Some DBMS vendors don't offer a choice.

someone adds a check constraint on one of the tables
and now you're WRITE fails for a reason alien to your code.

In an RPG program, a write-update combo should at least be conditioned on the write succeeding.

My inclination is to implement integrity constraints in application code rather than record definitions. One of the disadvantages of having a DBA is that division of responsibility for data integrity may be divided between two or more people, each using different tools, battling over turf. But if that's what a business wants to do, then journaling could cover their tails.

-Nathan.