Re: Re: DB_Table: Summary and Pre-Call

On Apr 7, 2004, at 10:37 AM, Sérgio Carvalho wrote:

Your reasoning make sense, if the only app accessing the database is the PHP app, and you want to keep the app RDBMS-independent. However, experience tells that this is almost never the case. Relational databases, being relatively standard, are a prime target for application integration. Many many times apps colaborate with 'foreign' software at the relational database layer. PHP has good date manipulation routines which could, at a performance cost, replace the native database ones. However, it is expectable that other applications won't use PHP. By throwing away native datatypes, you'll be forcing other software running on top of your database to use a rather poor database.

Understood, and it can rightly be considered a weakness. However, the target audience for DB_Table is developers who want to distribute their software (e.g., you develop a comment system, or whatever, and you want it to run on everything known to man because you don't know for certain what the end-user will be using). Those distributed apps may or may not expect "their" data to be used by other applications. So while your point is valid, I'm not certain it applies to most of the target audience; where it does apply, those developers will probably not be using any level of abstraction (or a very limited level) because they know their app will run on a specific RDBMS. The secondary audience is prototype-developers, who need to get a proof-of-concept up and running quickly. In these cases, the developers are "building one to throw away" (Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month") and they're not always concerned with the long-term app, just the initial showpiece.

You are correct, and I agree -- I want very much to test DB_Table under different systems. I only have access to two RDBMS engines, MySQL and MS-SQL, and only have complete control over the MySQL one. I'd be thrilled if you could help test it out, but I understand if you cannot.

I'll try to have a look at it in the next few days. I can also setup a postgresql server for you to test yourself. Do you have a static IP address, so I can drill a hole in the firewall?

Heh. ;-) Let me get back to you on that. -- Paul M. Jones Savant: the simple alternative to Smarty. http://phpsavant.com/