* Oleg Broytmann wrote [2005-10-09 20:50:13 +0400]:

>    Well, at least I haven't missed anything obvious. :) Seems I am starting
> to understand...

It felt odd to me, leaving SQL behind as my default tool of choice for
persisting related data. In fact the first time I tried to walk away, I
failed. Either my inexperience with ZODB, or ZODB itself, or a little of
both, caused me to make a mess of a ZODB database and I walked away for a
year. A corrupt db and/or corrupt data within a still functioning db, and my
own lack of understanding as to why it occured, had me run back into the
ever-loving arms of sql again.

When Durus came to life I decided to give the OODB world a second shot and am
very pleased that I did. Being able to read and understand the code in a
single sitting had a lot to do with wanting to give Durus a try, not to
mention all the other fine work that has come out from mems-exchange folks
past and present.

I think every sql-oriented developer should give the OODB world a try for a
while. It can't hurt; thinking about solutions from a different perspective
is bound to be a good growing experience.

One thing is for certain - I do not miss at all the gymnastics required to
map objects on to sql relational data. Sure SQLObject (which I like and still
use when I am forced to deal with sql) and other wrappers do a good job of
making easy to moderately complex object definition fairly trivial, but at
some point it seems one is always running into sql or wrapper limitations.
Once I got past the mental leap of leaving sql behind, at some point I
suddenly realized that I wasn't running into road blocks, my code looked
cleaner and was more readable, and I was more productive than before.