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Re: Nested Editing Contexts
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Re: Nested Editing Contexts


  • Subject: Re: Nested Editing Contexts
  • From: "Jerry W. Walker" <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 21:07:04 -0400

Hi, Mike, et al,


On May 30, 2007, at 6:49 PM, Mike Schrag wrote:
I've seen that document as well, but I noticed the date on it was the latter half of 2005. I read all of the documentation Apple had regarding WebObjects back in 2000, and I even managed to get my hands on the training manuals for the courses they used to offer on WebObjects, and I don't ever recall seeing anything like that in any of the material. Of course, that is not to say it wasn't there. I wasn't specifically looking for it, so it's easy for me to imagine myself zipping over those short paragraphs without them making a big enough impression for me to remember. It is entirely possible that something like this was available from Apple very early on and I missed it.
I noticed you mentioned the 2005 update in your first post, so just to be a pedantic jerk, I checked into this :) Jerry has referenced that paragraph as early as 2004, prior to the 2004-12-02 update listed in that document's revision history, which puts it in there in 2004. The next earlier revision listed is 2003, but it's labeled "First version of Enterprise Objects," which is sort of a sketchy title, but I think it's referring to the first version of this document, not the first version of EOF which obviously predates 2003 pretty significantly.


"...pedantic jerk..."??? If you were anyone else and had said that about Mike Schrag, I would have taken umbrage sufficient that it might have required more than 3 beers and lots of "there, there, Jer" pats to keep me from waxing pugilistic.

...pedantic... yes, sometimes. :-) ...jerk... NEVER. You're research and comments have been overwhelmingly helpful to the community at large and to me personally. So, THANKS.



Though I may have been the one to reference that paragraph as early as 2004, and though I tend to agree with Steven on most of his issues, I will say that when I first started teaching WebObjects back in 1999, I don't remember any such warning, suggestion or even disclaimer.

In fact, I have a fairly clear memory of the teaching materials recommending (sometime around the turn of the century... boy, doesn't it feel weird to reference THAT turn of the century?) that one reasonable design approach for keeping editing contexts clean was to avoid inserting EOs into them until you were comfortable that the EO would be saved.

Though I don't remember any overt change in Apple's official position on this, I think EOF started depending on the EOs in an editing context around the time of WO 5.0. Perhaps Ray Kiddy could chime in here and offer an insider view on:

  * whether this changed

  * when it changed

  * how it was possible for it to change



Regarding fail-fast vs. fail-sometime-in-the-future-really- confusingly, I totally agree with you, Mike, in preferring fail-fast (and in an obvious way). However, I would also like to extend that to my favorite WO issue, the old changing WO template between appendToResponse and takeValuesFromRequest.

Why can't some sort of architectural "checksum" be calculated on the nodes of the template object graph as the template is first built in the appendToResponse, stored in the WOContext for that page and compared against any subsequent rebuilding of the template, throwing an exception with a clear message when the two don't compare? The answer to this question is left as an exercise for the student, I'm up to my ears right now preparing for a roll-out.

I think that nearly every WO developer with over a couple years experience has fallen into that trap and spent many hours banging their head against the wall for the schizophrenic behavior that WO subsequently exhibits.

For "students" interested in the problem, consider multiplying the digits of each element id by monotonically increasing prime numbers and summing the results over the page. I'm not sure that this would guarantee a different checksum for every change in template architecture, but it would probably come pretty close.


Regards, Jerry

But this is all a silly discussion. I do agree that EOF is really bad about letting you know when you screw up. I MUCH prefer fail- fast than fail-sometime-in-the-future-really-confusingly, and EOF is all about fail-sometime-in-the-future. And while that comment IS documented, it really doesn't get the notation that it deserves. Maybe they can bold that sentence in the 2007 documentation revision :)

It's totally pointless anyway (except for that warm, happy feeling it gives me) ;)
I don't believe this is true ... I think bitching is heard, if not directly, by proxy.

ms

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__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial Strength Internet Enabled Systems


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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Nested Editing Contexts
      • From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Nested Editing Contexts (From: "Ted Archibald" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Steven Mark McCraw <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Steven Mark McCraw <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Chuck Hill <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Steven Mark McCraw <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Nested Editing Contexts (From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>)

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