[Seaside] RDB access (was: Rolling with Ruby on Rails vs. Seaside)

[Yanni Chiu]

Pablo Iaria wrote:
> 
> Hi Avi, Colin:
> 
> I didn't have to modify anything... It worked just fine...
> 
> It is small, simple to use and understand.
> 
> So it is possible so access other data sources than pgsql or mysql.

IIRC, the finer point of the earlier discussion was that Glorp
on Squeak could only use PostgreSQL. When I did the PostgreSQL
client I had a "green field", and decided not to specify an
additional RDB access layer that other RDB's could conform to.

The reasons included:
- such a abstract layer would emerge if it was really needed
  (and I didn't want to do the research - you almost have to
  build it to get it right)
- some data access layer always gets built anyway,
  so just let that layer deal with postgres directly,
  instead of possibly getting in the way of optimizations
- my goal was to have a common way to access postgres from
  any Smalltalk, not a common way to access any RDB from Squeak.
  (By the way, I've tested my postgres client in both VA and VW).

I've not tried Glorp on Squeak, but IIUC it deals directly with
the PostgreSQL client. It would seem to be a simple matter [:)]
to agree on a common RDB access layer (now that there are connections
for MySQL and ODBC) and change Glorp to use it. We might even want
this layer to be portable across Smalltalks as well.

I may take this on (the common RDB layer, not tweaking Glorp),
since I may need to access some data on Sybase (I hope ODBC will
work for it).

--yanni