To persist or not to persist ?

[Tril]

On 14 Oct 1999, Laurent Martelli wrote:

> What would you chose : explicit save or explicit delete ?

You have to have both contexts.  When you are working, as a configuration
option, you choose your preference, which then becomes "default" for
creating new objects.  The default can be overridden in specific
instances, or you switch contexts.

This is how we should handle decisions like this in every case.  Another
case is garbage collection, do you want explicit deleting of data, or do
you want it automated?  So GC should also be "configurable."

Necessarily, making everything configurable leads to a lot of
configuration, so we need a powerful configuration mechanism to handle
defaults (contexts) and to shift between them (both for new work and for
changing groups of old data). 

What is this configuration mechanism?  I prefer to fully integrate it with
the rest of the system.  That means using function arguments for
configuration options, and partial evaluation to select contexts.  If we
do this, the configuration mechanism is "already there."

I'm not sure of the details of the system you are developing (I haven't
been following too closely), so I don't know if the same solution will
work for you.

David Manifold <dem@tunes.org>
This message is placed in the public domain.