Re: [PHP4BETA] php and MS SQL Server....

Manuel Lemos wrote: > > Last November Stig approached to me when I announce that a database > abstraction layer package named Metabase needed beta testers. He told me > about PEAR and a database abstraction layer that was going to be > distributed with it. > > He also mentioned that his intention was to avoid to have yet another > database abstraction layer and asked me if he could see the package. Of > course I granted him and many other people access to the Metabase beta > archives, but I never heard from him since then. I was hoping Metabase would be what I was looking for, but it went way beyond that I had in mind for PHP's standard distribution. > Later I was invited to contribute with my classes but that was it. Nothing > happened. You were invited, but it's not like I go around nagging people into contributing. If I don't hear anything, I assume that the person doesn't have the time, the interest or something else. > Metabase was publically released in January and is one the top downloaded > packages in the PHP Classes site. > > As for PEAR it will still feature Stig's database abstraction layer which > development bearly started and from my experience it will take a long time > before it reaches a level of maturity that is good enough to interface > properly with each DBMS. Metabase took over a year. > > Although, I didn't mean to develop Metabase to be integrated in a > officially sanctioned PHP code repository, I thought the intention of Stig > to avoid duplicate work on a common database abstraction layer package was > great. But now it seems that he didn't mean to use my package anyway. > > I don't mind whether it is going to be or not be included in any code > repository or if people just approach to me just to "borrow" some ideas. I > just developed Metabase for use in my PHP work. If more people can use it, > fine, hopefully they will get back to me with improvement suggestions bug > reports or new drivers that I didn't have the opportunity to develop. Manuel, DB and Metabase are different beasts. DB doesn't attempt to solve everything that Metabase does. The reason? Since this thing is after all distributed as part of PHP, it should be as flexible as possible, and restrict users as little as possible. People should have the option to not add all this complexity if they don't want it, so for DB I want layers of features that people can opt using. That said, there is nothing that prevents the cools things in Metabase from being implemented on top of DB. I just don't consider that as important as the basic thing. > I just hoped that if PEAR is not going to be a open repository like CPAN > where anybody can upload their code to avoid others unnecessarily > duplicating efforts, they stop announcing that it will be that way. I don't understand what makes you say this. PEAR is, and will continue being, an open repository, and I have never implied otherwise. > >> > Anyway, why weren't the authors of the existing PHP code repositories > >> > contacted first to check if they are willing to implement the things you > > >Maybe they should have been, but aren't these people on the list anyway? > >PEAR didn't just pop up over night, there has been talk about it for a while. > > This is the talk about it. There has been talk about this for a long time, from before it got its first name. Search the mailing list for "pear" and "pecl", and you'll see that there has been talk about it before. There has been lots of commits to pear in the CVS logs, and I've even posted the API draft for DB to the list several months ago. - Stig