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My question began as an inquiry regarding naming a new object based on a variable, but as I wrote out my problem, I realized my solution's approach may not be appropriate, so I will ask instead for general design advice. Allow me to set forth a simple example of the type of problem I'd like to solve.

Problem:

There exists a database that holds information on each planet in the solar system. The database has multiple tables.

The program intends to access this data to display it to the user in a variety of manners. The program does not intend to manipulate the data at its source, though calculations on two fields may be performed to determine certain display characteristics.

What is the optimal method for accessing the data?

My initial approach, (read: gut feeling, no research) was to take each related row of data from the database and create an object of a custom class based on the data. So you might wind up with:

Universe.Planet.Earth.mass = 1
Universe.Planet.Earth.radiusPolar = 1
Universe.Planet.Earth.radiusEquatorial = 1
Universe.Planet.Earth.aphelion = 1.106
Universe.Planet.Earth.perihelion = .983

Universe.Planet.Mars.mass = .107
Universe.Planet.Mars.radiusPolar = .531
Universe.Planet.Mars.radiusEquatorial = .533
Universe.Planet.Mars.aphelion = 1.666
Universe.Planet.Mars.perihelion = 1.381

Then use these objects to perform whatever actions the program needed to. I ran into a lot of problems trying to implement this, so that I believe my design approach is fundamentally flawed.

Any advice on how I might approach this?

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  • @MichaelPetrotta Are there guidelines for subject and body formatting available? Commented Nov 6, 2011 at 19:58
  • Michael, there are some on the right side of the "Ask a Question" page, with a link to more detail. Then there's a lot of guidance over on Meta, which I wouldn't expect new users to read through completely. Commented Nov 6, 2011 at 20:17

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I would abstract it further. Create a Universe and a universe has galaxies, so there should be a collection of galaxies in the universe. Each galaxy would contain space objects (planets, moons, etc). I would end up with a class that similar to your except:

  • the object name would be a property of the class
  • the object would have a enumerated type (planet, moon, etc)
  • something describing location (distance from center of galaxy???)

I'm not a space junkie, so I don't know what you could building into a base class that would apply to all objects, but I'm guessing you do.

If there are calculations, it may be better to have SQL calculate them and make it part of a returned recordset.

What are you calculating?

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4 Comments

I'd considered further abstraction, but simplified it for the purposes of nailing this down before expanding it to encompass other objects. Regarding calculations; I may, for instance, use a constant (point of origin) and two planet's aphelion/perihelion to determine the distance between those two objects at a given point in time. That is secondary to figuring out how best to work with defined data, though.
I don't think your approach is bad considering what I know of the requirements. What problems had you run into?
I'm having trouble moving the data from the database into objects. After reading your post again, though, enumerating the object type would let me programatically decide hwo to assign it. That was one big challenge, 'should this object be a planet or satellite?' I'm gonna run with that for a bit and see if I can make some more progress. Thank you.
I wound up using collections, which solved my issues wonderfully. I'm on a roll now, much to the chagrin of the friends who i canceled on this evening. ;)

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