Entity-Attribute-Value models

Just listened to Ayendes podcast on RavenDB, a .NET document DB solution, at Herding Code (http://herdingcode.com/?p=255). A long podcast but worth the effort with some interesting stuff especially around dealing with model changes over time, event sourcing and the sweet spot for usage. Ayende mentioned Entity-Attribute-Value models as particularly appropriate for a document DB which caught my attention as it sounded very much like the approach we had taken at PAI. So I started digging around and found the following:

• Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model
• Python/Django implementation: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/eav-django/1.3.3
• C# implementation: http://hanssens.org/post/Generic-Entity-Attribute-Value-Model-e28093-A-POCO-Implementation.aspx

The implementations are focused on persistence using a relation DB but with a document database this should all just happen. I think it is time for us to switch out our long thin relational model for a document database - probably RavenDB.

Edit: Just found this useful blog post which dissects an MVC/RavenDB app and comments on best practice: http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/07/28/reviewing-communitycourses-a-ravendb-application.aspx