TriadCity Message of the Day
2014-05-11

TriadCity's crackerjack technology team has continued the upgrade of core server components which we announced last month.

We've finished moving our database from a traditional relational one to the newfangled "NoSQL" object database MongoDB. If that sounds like a brain-breaker, don't worry about it. It means we've enhanced our technology to provide additional capabilities.

But. It was a vastly bigger job than we thought it would be, requiring several weeks when we thought it would be just a few days. Which only goes to show.

OK, so, what's the big deal about NoSQL?

Mainly, it's a better fit for the kind of programming technology we use. "Object-oriented" languages like Java don't map intuitively to the structures used by relational databases. They're object-oriented, not relation-oriented. Whole technology domains called "object-relational mapping" exist in the wild for managing this mismatch; in our experienced opinions they all distort the Java world in ugly and ungainly ways. By contrast, MongoDB, being an "object database", is a lovely match for Java, requiring almost no code at all to marry up. This makes it vastly simpler to work with, which in turn means it takes less time and is less likely to result in subtle bugs.

Y'all should see exactly zero difference. We'll see our developers' lives improve.

Now, please note. This kind of change touches just about every feature of the TriadCity game world and the SmartMonsters web site supporting it. It's a big deal, and it's a seriously big deal to test. We've been banging on it for five weeks in dev, but, please do be aware, the odds are strong there'll be quirky corners and unexpected edge cases we didn't find. If you bump into something broken in the game world, bug it and we'll get right on it. If it's on the web site, email us and ditto.

Now let's wrap up the Vampire Theme Park and throw a big party.

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