WEEK 5 ORM (Object-relational Mapping)
- Winnie Au and Josh Tatterton
- Aug 13, 2015
- 1 min read
What is ORM? Imagine a magical box that anyone or anything can speak into without regard to what language that person or thing is using which allows the messages they wish to communicate to live on for all eternity. Well...that doesn't quite exist, but Object-relational Mapping does and as far as I know (don't quote me on that) it is the closest thing we have in the world of programming that does that (sort of). Let me elaborate. What Josh and I have gathered from our research is that Object-relational Mapping removes the middleman from data sources and our applications when the two are attempting to communicate. An exerpt I found from the following link gives a more comprehensive overview of what we mean by that:
"Object-relational mapping (ORM) is a mechanism that makes it possible to address, access and manipulate objects without having to consider how those objects relate to their data sources. ORM lets programmers maintain a consistent view of objects over time, even as the sources that deliver them, the sinks that receive them and the applications that access them change."
ORM frameworks, like DataMapper are incredibly useful because they mask/encapsulate changes in the data sources, so when they do change, only the ORM frameworks need to change, not the applications which use them. They are also useful because rather than having to refer to the database itself, we can simply refer to objects and the ORM system will pull out the necessary information. Up and to the left you'll find a simple representation. This can be found at the link below as well.
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