The idea is to delegate as much work as possible to a database. I want to illustrate advantages of this idea with the working example of platzcart.com, touching security, scalability and performance problems.
I am going to explain how it is possible (and is easy) to implement an "application layer" in PostgreSQL procedural language (so close to data itself still keeping the idea of 3-tier architecture intact).
How to effectively use specific PostgreSQL features.
Thesis:
Database provides you the highest possible abstraction level.
Database is the best tool to arrange an access control scheme.
Database is the safest place to store the most sensitive secretes.
A shorter processing is always better than a longer one.
Evgeny Panferov was born in 1976 in Krasnodar, Russia. I was graduated in applied math at Kuban State University in 1998, trained in theory and several languages and paradigms and is employed in IT since 1997.
I participated in several web projects, including bankir.ru. I have designed and programmed platzcart.com (e-commerce service) almost solely.
I also created and maintain three tiny Open Source projects:
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/urt
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/tinycaptcha
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/transearly
In UNIX-way i trust. I believe all the programs should be tiny and perform exactly ONE TASK.