Re: [PHP4BETA] Automated installation of php apps?

Hello Seth, On 23-Feb-00 01:06:25, you wrote: >This is slightly off topic, but I figured that someone on the list would >know something about or have implemented something of the sort... >Do any of you do some sort of automated installation for your webapps? Do >you do this with perl? How do you handle the database installation/creation >of tables? Thanks! I have developed a sophisticated technique that simplifies database instalation that I can no longer live without that. I have developed a DBMS independent package named Metabase to interface with databases with PHP like there are many other similar package for the same purpose. The difference is that Metabase goes far beyond when compared with other packages not only in terms of database interfacing, but also in terms of database creation and maintenance. It comes with a parser class that takes a DBMS independent description of database schemas (tables, fields, indexes and sequences). This parser takes descriptions in a custom XML format and builds data structure that is fed to a manager class and it installs all the database schema objects using the a DBMS driver class that you specify. The really cool thing about this package is that the manager class is able to look into the schema of a database previosly installed with Metabase and compare it with a new schema version that you want to upgrade your database to. It extracts ths changes and performs the necessary alterations without affecting the data that was added to the database since it was installed or upgraded for the last time. Believe me, this saved me hundreds of hours of database schema maintenance and I feel safer to work with Metabase then of making database instalation and alteration scripts by hand. In my experience, many developers avoid adding features to their applications because they don't want to risk to destroy their databases data by accident. There are other cool features in Metabase, but you may read all about it in the user manual and the tutorial that is available for free with the whole package here: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/browse.html/package/20 Regards, Manuel Lemos Web Programming Components using PHP Classes. Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos@acm.org -- E-mail: mlemos@acm.org URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp --