[Info-vax] Better languages than BASIC

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/12/2024 3:04 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 1/12/2024 7:36 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/11/2024 8:56 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:25:34 -0500, bill wrote:
>>>> On 1/11/2024 1:30 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>> If you want to write business applications, then either Java or a
>>>>> subset of C++. C++ subset to be chosen based on programmer skillsets
>>>>> and the problem to be solved.
>>>>
>>>> Or COBOL which was actually designed for the task.
>>>
>>> Supposedly. But a couple of decades after the COBOL spec was first
>>> published, these things called “relational databases” appeared on the
>>> scene, and they soon became essential for “business applications”. 
>>> And the
>>> best way to access them turned out to require generating SQL query
>>> strings. But good string handling had not been considered a necessity 
>>> for
>>> “business applications” in COBOL. So it had to resort to nonstandard
>>> kludges tacked to the side to cope with SQL queries.
>>
>> Dynamically generating SQL strings is actually a big no no.
>>
>> That is the road to poor performance and big security holes.
>>
>> Traditional Cobol embedded SQL does much better than that.
> 
> SQL is nice.  It works.  But, I consider it a square hole, and you 
> better not have a round peg.
> 
> For some operations, one must go through rather convoluted things to get 
> the desired result.

SQL as a language is a bit quirky.

But its support across databases, support i libraries,
available skills and flexibility makes it "the" database
thing.

The modern solution is an ORM where the the developer does
not write the SQL manually but it gets generated by a library, so the
developer can focus on an object model.

Arne