Programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s that natively and seamlessly allow

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

s to continue existing after the

program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Progra ...

has been closed down are called persistent programming languages.

JADE Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite (a silicate of calcium and magnesium in the amphibole group of ...

is one such language. A persistent programming language is a programming language extended with constructs to handle persistent data. It is distinguished from embedded SQL in at least two ways: In a persistent programming language: * The query language is fully integrated with the host language and both share the same

type system In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer progra ...

. * Any format changes required between the host language and the database are carried out transparently. In Embedded SQL: * Where the host language and data manipulation language have different type systems, code conversion operates outside of the OO type system, and hence has a higher chance of having undetected errors. * Format conversion must be handled explicitly and takes a substantial amount of code. Using Embedded SQL, a programmer is responsible for writing explicit code to fetch data into memory or store data back to the database. In a persistent programming language, a programmer can manipulate persistent data without having to write such code explicitly. The drawbacks of persistent programming languages include: * While they are powerful, it is easy to make programming errors that damage the database. * It is harder to do automatic high-level optimization. * They do not support declarative querying well.

Examples

MUMPS MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts Gener ...

Caché ObjectScript Caché ObjectScript is a part of the Caché database system sold by InterSystems. The language is a functional superset of the ANSI-standard MUMPS programming language. Since Caché is at its core a MUMPS implementation, it can run ANSI MUMPS ...

Examples

See also