[Chandler-dev] [Sum] The Great Architecture Discussion of 2007

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 03:34 PM 10/9/2007 -0700, D John Anderson wrote:
>Hmm. I think the repository is pretty separate from the app. For
>example, it would be pretty easy to replace the repository as long as
>the replacement had a similar API.

That's a bit like saying you could replace a bicycle with a 
motorcycle as long as you could find a motorcycle whose speed is 
controlled by pedalling.  :)


>Changing the API would be a
>problem if the replacement didn't provide the necessary features the
>app used.

Some repository features are used mainly by CPIA, for data that we 
don't necessarily need to *store* in the repository.  If we stopped 
storing those things, we could use a replacement that traded off 
those features for better performance.


>  It's hard to imagine any data access mechanism whose API
>would not affect the code that used the API.

This isn't really the crucial issue; it's, "what parts of the code 
have to know about implementation details?"  Currently, application 
code "knows" things it shouldn't have to know, regardless of the 
back-end, which makes experimenting with alternatives more difficult.