[Haskell-cafe] haskell or lazy functional as procedure language

[Ertugrul Soeylemez]

Permjacov Evgeniy <permeakra at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, I know, I want something strange. But consider situation, when one
> is starting a project and finds, that he need s
>
> 1) ACID relational storage
> 2) Power of good RDBMS system (postgresql for example)
> 3) Power of some very hight level language and compiled (haskell for
> example) for stored procedures
> 4) And all data processing MUST be performed inside RDBMS
> 5) And does not have enough money to by Oracle ore other commercial RDBMS.
>
> I already considered using ghc with postgresql. It could be very, very
> good pair, but.... ghc runtime cannot be re-initialized, and reqular
> way for stored procedures in postgresql is calling function from
> shared object (meaning, I have to shut down ghc runtime each time
> stored procedure ended).
>
> What other options do you see?

I'm using a Haskell + PostgreSQL combination a lot.  For access to the
database I mostly use the HDBC library.  In general much if not most of
my data processing is written in the database language PL/PgSQL, which
has a very low barrier and can really do most of what you need easily,
likely much more easily than an interface to an external PL could do.

However, in my case the Haskell application is still the main program.
You can exploit the full power of both without moving everything into
the database, and honestly I wouldn't do that, because it would make
things more complex.  I also believe it's not really possible without
writing a full-fledged Haskell extension for PostgreSQL, because just
running programs cannot do long term concurrency well, for example.

Rather I have the view that the database should do the data logic and
the data logic only.  But it should do it so well that you can easily
access the database from multiple programs without problems.  As soon as
that goal is reached (though you can use PostgreSQL rules to some
extent, in general you will want to write real procedures), there is
really little reason not to let the Haskell program be primary.

If by some policy you are forced to have the database primary, then you
are pretty lost with Haskell.  You should consider following A.M.'s
advice or just use one of the built-in PLs like Python.  As said, when
it comes to data logic, PL/PgSQL performs very well and can express many
things concisely, so in many cases you won't even need an external
language.


Greets,
Ertugrul


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