[thesite] last 5 query

Joshua OIson joshua at alphashop.net
Mon Nov 27 06:21:40 CST 2000


About my last post,

The only reason I would stay away from application scope variables in this
case is because of extensibility.  Where does one draw the line of what
should be store in application variables?  The "last-5" might be a
candidate, but what about usage information, or whatever is thought of next.
At some point the application scope is going to get cluttered with odds and
ends that are not accounted for as prototypes change.  If there was only one
developer, it may make sense, but with multiple developers the scope may
become hard to manage since there is no really easy way to scrutenize what
information is currently in the scope.

The other reason I suggest not using the application scope is also
extensibility.  What if you want to change the information to
"last-5-per-forum-or-per-article-category"  In a DB you could just add an
category_id field and change the triggers/SQL accordingly, whereas in
application variables you'd have to rework the entire naming convention and
do a whole lot of "evaluates" or some other kludgy method to insert and
extract the information.  At some point it becomes not worth it.

Any other thoughts?

-joshua





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