Re: Nested Editing Contexts
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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