DB redesign idea

I got an idea this morning for making the customization model of DB much more flexible in a backwards-compatible way. Basically, the objects returned by DB::connect and DB::factory are of _one_ class, but using handler objects for conversions between the different layers: - the bare-bones abstracted API but with no query-manipulation - a basic "SQL compatibility" layer (today's DB_xxx::modifyQuery) - higher-level abstraction such as Metabase So instead of inheriting DB_common and specializing it, you instantiate DB_connection (or something) and set handler objects for the PHP API, SQL syntax and a user-defined layer on top of that. Example file structure: DB.php DB/mysql/api.php DB/mysql/syntax.php DB/oci8/api.php DB/oci8/syntax.php ... When you do "DB::connect('odbc(mssql)://mydsn')", DB will do this: 1. create a DB_connection object 2. instantiate a DB_odbc_api object and set that as the api handler 3. instantiate a DB_mssql_syntax object and set that as the query handler For example, when connecting through a real ODBC driver manager (3) is a necessity if you want to rewrite queries, because you don't know whether it's MySQL or Oracle behind the Data Source Name before connecting to it. The really cool new thing is being able to add more such handlers though. That way we can be compatible with Metabase (XML schema definitions and all) without sacrificing the simplicity and performance of the simple interface. What do you think? - Stig