OpenWGA 7.9 - OpenWGA Concepts and Features

The question to build a data-driven application either with a custom SQL database or based on HDBModel may be a matter of taste and individual preference. Using relational tables and data records may appear more natural to developers being used to that, and of course there is nothing wrong with that widely adopted approach.

However HDBModel has its advantages over pure relational databases which should be considered:

• No messing with database schema definition, update: HDBModel builds upon the standard OpenWGA content store schema to implement every possible data structure. It also takes care of enforcing structure redefinitions automatically. You do not need to leave the OpenWGA/WebTML environment to cope with these issues.
• Documents contra data records: While arguably SQL data records may be more effective in terms of storage space a document provides valuable storage flexibility. It can take any number of data items stored to it, also arbitrary numbers of file attachments. The used items and attachments are extendable without schema redefinitions. Documents also can be organized hierarchically, providing implicit relation definition and deletion cascading.
• All OpenWGA content management features: With using HDBModel you get all the features of OpenWGA content stores out of the box: Lucene fulltext indexing, versioning, access control, caching etc.