SQL still serves
By Jennifer deJong
November 18, 2008 —
(Page 1 of 3)
It looked like an idea whose time had come: program the database using the developer’s primary language, sparing the programmer the pain of dealing with Structured Query Language.
But anecdotal evidence suggests that accessing the database directly from C#, Java and other modern languages is not a mainstream approach, and what was earlier seen as a breakthrough just isn’t a big deal to many developers.
“There is a lack of uptake, and I don’t think that will change,” said Duncan Mills, senior director of project management for the Oracle Fusion middleware group. There is “no overriding reason” to use Java instead of SQL to manipulate the database, he said.
“Ninety-nine percent of all database access continues to be via SQL,” said Steven Smith, president of ASPAlliance, a community of Microsoft developers. “In practice, I know of very few developers who are making extensive use of [.NET-enabled SQL Server].”
Microsoft embedded the .NET framework in SQL Server 2005, allowing developers to program its database from C#, VB.NET or other .NET languages. Oracle Database 8i, released in 1999, enabled developers to manipulate the database using Java for the first time. Actual data calls are still handled by PL/SQL (Oracle’s extension to SQL), noted Mills.
LINQing to data
One factor inhibiting a shift to database programming from C# or Java has been the emergence of newer technologies, such as Microsoft’s .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) and frameworks based on Java Persistence API (JPA), sources said. Both approaches shield developers from working directly with SQL, but the JPA frameworks and LINQ offer a simpler way to handle data access for day-to-day business applications that don’t manage enormous volumes of data.
LINQ, which essentially puts a wrapper around SQL, is “a big thing,” said Bill Graziano, vice president of marketing for the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS). Its emergence is a key reason why “we don’t see people replacing Transact-SQL stored procedures with [Common Language Runtime] stored procedures.”
Transact-SQL is the proprietary extension to SQL used by Microsoft and Sybase.
Related Search Term(s): databases, Java, LINQ, SQL, Microsoft
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