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

Milan Zimmermann milan.zimmermann at sympatico.ca
Mon Jan 31 14:06:14 CET 2005


On January 30, 2005 01:29 pm, Benjamin Pollack wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 16:56:36 -0500, Milan Zimmermann
>
> <milan.zimmermann at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > On January 29, 2005 05:24 pm, Todd Blanchard wrote:
> > > I'm curious how did ruby get such good db coverage?  Is it just using
> > > odbc?
> >
> > Good Point .. I am sure someone here knows .. I checked
> > http://www.rubyonrails.com/
> >
> > and it says:
> >
> > "What databases?
> > MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, and DB2 are supported out of the
> > box. Oracle and FrontBase drivers are in the works."
> >
> > so it appears it is not ODBC.
> >
> > Here http://api.rubyonrails.com/?u=ar.rubyonrails.com they say:
> >
> > Database support
> >
> > Active Record ships with adapters for MySQL/Ruby (compatible with
> > Ruby/MySQL), PostgreSQL, and SQLite (needs SQLite 2.8.13+ and SQLite-Ruby
> > 1.1.2+). The adapters are around 100 lines of code fulfilling the
> > interface specified by ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter.
> > Writing a new adapter should be a small task - especially considering the
> > extensive test suite that'll make sure you're fulfilling the contract.
> >
> > So I'd guess some sort of wrappers around "native" interface to each
> > database. Which, for example for middle tier application against Oracle
> > would mean, I assume, installing something like SQL-net client in the
> > middle-tier...
>
> The database drivers are indeed all native. Rails leverages existing
> Ruby database packages that have been available for some time. Most of
> these package up native C libraries in Ruby classes, although there is
> an increasing movement to rewrite these in pure Ruby. There would be
> nothing preventing you from writing an ODBC database package for Ruby,
> and one exists (http://www.ch-werner.de/rubyodbc/) but Rails doesn't
> support it. The adaptors referenced in the Rails documentation refer
> to linking those existing database drivers to ActiveRecord. This
> basically just involves explaining the syntax for select-from-where
> and a few other minor things, which is why the adaptors are so short.
> But they do rely upon existing database drivers to work.
>
> I suspect that there are more available for Ruby than Squeak because
> Ruby's origin as a scripting language encouraged its use in areas
> where it needed to connect to legacy applications using existing
> databases. Squeak, in contrast, generally has been used where there is
> no need to interface with legacy apps, so it develops its own
> solutions. That's just a guess, though.


Good point and thanks for the clarification above

Milan

>
> --Benjamin
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