Ryan Higgins wrote:
So is the performance difference negligible in keeping two tables ?
Who really cares about machine performance these days. CPU, memory and storage can be doubled at the drop of a hat. Why are we planning to put in an ORM? Not to speed up the code. To increase people efficiency. <RANT> I am *VERY* concerned about people performance. To wit: (*) the number of bugs being uncovered in Koha increases monotonically day by day; they are not being fixed fast enough (*) it is very difficult to maintain and fix bugs in some of the areas of the Koha software; this results in a people inefficiency, i.e. it can take hours to find one little shard of error in the messy Perl 4.0 coding we have to live with (*) the "organic" way that Koha has grown in leaps and bounds over the years with no overall analysis and design has meant that once again people (i.e. developer) efficiency suffers (*) the lack of peer review of existing code in Koha; there are many nasty and out-dated coding styles lurking therein if you care to look; (*) the lack of audit of database access; i.e. when I walk through the code, sometimes I can see that the same bits of data are loaded multiple times form the database, or worse, ten rounds trips are used to the database when one would do (piggy backing) (*) software developers start to shy away and eventually shun bady designed and written systems since it becomes a nightmare to care for them and keep them up and running reliably. If you don't know what I am talking about, perhaps a new Wiki page is required to explain people vs machine efficiency. Those who have been around the block a few times will read the above as the same old repetitive litany of many software projects that need care and a helping hand. It is very easy for geeks to comment on how slow this piece of Perl code is or how inefficient that line of SQL is, but rarely do we address the real solid underlying issues which involve managing people within the project and helping them to work efficiently. Let's get some perspective on Koha development: the problems that Koha suffer ain't gonna go away if we improve the efficiency of the code and the data model. They will only be addressed and resolved if we manage the people resources we have available to fix things. And especially only if it becomes easier to understand the Koha code base and more efficient to manage and change it. </RANT> cheers rickw -- _________________________________ Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Tis the dream of each programmer before his life is done, To write three lines of APL and make the damn thing run.