(This question is mainly directed at the developers, or anyone with an intimate knowledge of Jive Messenger.)
Has any consideration been given to having Jive Messenger leverage Prevayler? (I suspect this would require a code fork, but I defer to those who know Jive.)
Jim,
There’‘s little chance that we’‘d support Prevayler. There’'s a few reasons:
It offers little or no performance advantages for an app like Jive Messenger.
It will always be a requirement to store info in an external db for many users. Using hsqldb to meet the need of an embedded database makes much more sense architecturally (and is easier to maintain).
Prevayler doesn’'t allow for reporting or interesting queries over your data.
Any particular reason you’'re interested in support for it?
-Matt
No particular requirement for it, actually. I’‘ve been aware of Prevayler for a few months now, and while the proponents say it’‘s far easier to work with (if you’‘re a Java developer), anyone I’‘ve personally spoken with hasn’‘t bought into it. I’'m hoping to gain a better understanding by finding a viable project which is using it and thus learn more about it through osmosis. They certainly make it sound attractive, with performance numbers that even make MySQL sound dreadful.
I figured if it was worth pursuing, you would have said so.
I’‘m a big fan of the KISS principle, which is why (as much as I like MySQL) I try to avoid using databases like MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, etc. for the less data-intensive apps out there. I try to ask myself the questions like, “When my peers give this an acceptance review, is it sufficiently straightforward, or will a resource need to be assigned to it to do the day-in, day-out maintenance tasks?” If there’‘s an external DB, then the questions regarding snapshot-in-time backups (and the reciprocal restores) come to mind. Who’'s the DBA? Are they conversant in ? Can the app recover from a system crash (or from a restored DB) or will we be dead in the water without the help of the acolytes of the priesthood? Stuff like that.
If Prevayler doesn’‘t make anyone’'s life better, then just ignore me.
Jim,
Yeah, I’‘d have to say I’‘m in the camp of developers that don’'t quite “buy it” with Prevayler so far. It gets “Biled” fairly often which is quite funny:
http://www.jroller.com/page/fate/20041230#the_real_interview_with_klaus
I can see how the framework would be quite useful for some use cases, though.
Regards,
Matt