[lug] Doing your own transactions

[D. Stimits]

Ken Kinder wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 05:46:11PM -0700, D. Stimits wrote:
> > Ken Kinder wrote:
> > >
> > > Can I have some opinions on the idea of writing your own
> > > transaction layer into a web application that uses
> > > trnasaction-challanged databases? Has anyone tried this or
> > > can give me some horror stories I can discourage my boss
> > > with?
> > >
> > > I _really_ don't think it's a good idea.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Ken Kinder
> > > www.kenkinder.com
> > >
> >
> > Can you give an example of what kind of change is intended? Is this
> > change to the web server itself, or a cgi program, etc? What kind of
> > database is used now, and what kind of limit is being hit?
> >
> 
> Well... a CGI program has operations made on a SQL database. In the lowest
> common denominator case (MySQL), there is no support for transactions we
> can use (BerkelyDB tables have this nasty truncating problem in .23). So
> we either have to write our own system for doing commits and rollbacks on
> the database or use another database. My boss is pushing the former. I'm
> not really into that idea.
> 
> --
> Ken Kinder
> www.kenkinder.com

Writing something as a patch to missing features of a database sounds,
in this case, extraordinarily difficult to do right. Especially if you
are working with threading. I can't give you any horror stories, but you
might be able to find some of the missing requirements in postgres
instead. I'd pitch it to him by creating a demo that runs some part of
what you are looking for, rather than simply suggesting it. Sounds like
you are in a painful situation there.