[Zope-dev] Is ODBC the way to go ?

[Christopher Petrilli]

On 2/4/00 12:06 PM, Andrew M. Kuchling at akuchlin@mems-exchange.org wrote:

> Christopher Petrilli writes:
>> We'd be ecstatic if the Python community made more adapters, but we
>> currently support Sybase and Oracle, and its a pretty big burden given we
>> add no value to the equation.  If you were to offer an Informix adapter that
>> you supported, all the Informix people would love you, as would we. ;-)
> 
> Note that writing a DA isn't documented, and there's no test suite for
> verifying a DA's correct operation.

Actually it has been documented for several months, I wrote a HOW-TO and
announced it to the list with a resounding THUD.  I'm currently working with
our ODBC DA effort in a closed loop to try and improve it.  You can find it
here:

    http://www.zope.org/Members/petrilli/WritingADA

It was put up 11/3/1999.  As for no test suite, this is a correct assertion,
and we are working to create regression code for all things, but it's a slow
process.

> We use an mxODBC DA that I hacked out of the Oracle DA (I haven't yet
> gotten around to releasing it -- I know, I know...).  A little while
> ago, it started occasionally raising an exception about the connection
> being broken and I haven't yet tracked down the cause.  It's probably
> a bug in my code, but it might be a bug in the Oracle DA that I used
> as a starting point. Maintaining sychronization with the Oracle DA
> would be tedious.

It shouldn't be hard to use it as a basis for what needs done though,
especially after reading the HOW-TO.

> I found that the Oracle DA doesn't really have to change very much to
> use mxODBC.  Maybe this is an argument for pushing the whole Oracle DA
> into some standard product, where you'd write a single adapter module
> for each new database, rather than copying the whole DA over and over
> again.

This was the goal of the DB-API, but we don't need most of it.  This is the
point of ODBC as well.  Push the standard further down the stack:

    +-------------+
    |    ZOPE     |
    +-------------+
    | SQL Methods |
    +-------------+
    |     DA      |
    +-------------+
    |   DB-API    |
    +-------------+
    |    OCI      |
    +-------------+
    |   Oracle    |
    +-------------+

Instead what we'd really like to see is something more abstract below
DB-API.  I talked a lot with the ActiveState guys at the conference on this
one.  It's a long road, but Python is sorely lacking in comparison to Perl
in this arena, and we can't solve it alone.

Chris
-- 
| Christopher Petrilli        Python Powered        Digital Creations, Inc.
| petrilli@digicool.com                             http://www.digicool.com