Monday, February 06, 2006

Setting up HTML DB

We're starting to setup HTML DB in some of our databases. We think it will be a good tool to allow our developers to bang out some quick-and-dirty web applications very rapidly.

From a DBA perspective, it's pretty simple to setup and administer. However, I have a philosophical problem with the way workspaces are setup and used.

Traditionally, I'll setup an "owner" schema that holds the tables, packages, objects, etc. that an application may use. Then I'll create one or more "user" schemas that access the "owner's" objects. This method lets me grant the least amount of privileges needed so the application can run. I can also encapsulate business logic and relationships in the application's packages to hide the complexity to the developer. If a developer wants to call my "doit" method of my "stuff" package, he just calls OWNER.STUFF.DOIT().

My first problem with HTML DB is that it expects to have the workspace mapped to the owner schema. While I can place synonyms and views in the "user" schema to appear that the "user" owns the objects, this seems like a kludge. What if I have 50 user schemas, I have to create the same synonym 50 times? [disclaimer]I know about public synonyms, I'm just trying to illustrate a point.[/disclaimer]

My other problem is HTML DB wants to install the demo tables and application into every freaking workspace. I don't want my "user" schemas to have the ability to create tables and I surely don't want DEMO_* as a table in my production system.

I know there are other people out there running HTML DB. Do you map your HTML DB workspaces directly to the owner of the tables?

2 comments:

Tim... said...

I know what you mean. I installed it the other day to allow some of the developers to asses it.

My first attempt involved creating new schema with a bunch of synonyms and the necessary grants. It was OK until trying to generate an application based on tables/views. It didn't recognize the synonyms.

In the end I just pointed it at the development schema and let them go nuts...

If you hear anything about this pass it on. I don't have time to get involved in the project, but it would be nice to know :)

Cheers

Tim...

Anonymous said...

Hi Jeff,

I just started playing with HTML DB today, and was wondering about the same 2 issues. Have you by any chance found out any more info since you posted this last month?

Thanks,
Maggie Willson
maggie.willson@noaa.gov