Hey Stene,
Your remark about the approach inspired by Dan Ridinger is something that is an incredibly interesting subject, maybe even worth a topic on its own.
It is interesting to see how many new frameworks work like this, the database is considered leading and the logic in the framework simply uses the meta data available in the database. There is no duplication of meta data inside of the application. Making changes to the database structure is seen as a task done outside of the application often with the assumption the application is but one of many accessing the same database. Many frameworks do have functionality to push out database changes as part of automatically upgrading to a new build but its often separate or only loosely linked to the rest of the application.
However when we look at many Omnis applications often the eco system is such that the Omnis application stands by itself and for all intents and purposes owns the database. It being the leading source of meta data about the database structure and pushing that structure out to the database itself like we’ve done since native datafile days is a totally valid way of going about things. If you have the meta data in your application itself and can assume it is leading, it makes sense to use it especially if your application is designed to be database agnostic and you may know more about your database structure then the database engine does.
Both approaches are equally valid in my opinion, it really depends on the type of application you are building and to what type of clients you deploy.
It is therefor very strange in my humble opinion that when Omnis Studio 1.0 came out Raining Data (they were Raining Data back then, or still Omnis Software, I can’t remember) they seemed to not have been able to make up their minds on where to go. The schema class only contains about 25% of the meta data to go down the same path as with the Omnis Native Datafile so there is a lot of work to do if you want to go down scenario 2. But for scenario 1 the schema classes are completely overkill.
Anyway, that is a whole new topic on its own:)
