[Nitro] og regarding legacy apps table hints

[Aleksi Niemela]

Robert Wagner wrote:

>hi,
>to be a bit more specific about the way to describe tables in an
>external file. how do you like that way:
>
>  
>
I'm sorry but I don't understand at all what it is that we'd gain from 
this representation? Why not simply use Ruby and Og and define the same?

>class Person
>      look_at_file true
>end
>
>person.ini:
>
>; autogenerated file - generator: generator.php
>[table]
>name=persons
>sequence=persons_id_seq
>
>[keys]
>id=1
>
>[fields]
>; 1-number, 2-string, 3-date, 4-datetime, 5-blob
>id=1
>title=2
>fname=2
>lname=2
>address1=2
>address2=2
>country=2
>postalcode=2
>city=2
>phone=2
>fax=2
>mobile=2
>email=2
>web=2
>company_id=1
>creation=4
>lastedit=4
>version=1
>
>
>[autodate]
>created=creation
>modified=lastedit
>
>[autoinc]
>version=1
>
>[relations]
>has_many=notes
>belongs_to=company
>company.fkey=company_id
>notes.class=note
>
>  
>
In this case all above might not be possible with Og, yet, but something 
along lines:

class Person
  property :title, :fname, :lname, :address1, :address2, :country, 
:postalcode, :city, String
  property :phone, :fax, :mobile, :email, :web, String
  include Autodate
  include AutoInc
  autoinc :version
  has_many Notes
  belongs_to Company
end

There are or at least there will be ways to express foreign keys and 
indexes, as well as map names of fields and tables etc. There will be 
more useful parts (like autodate) for objects to be managed for 
persistence to include when needed. What's that special usefulness that 
your pure text version provides?

If you need this kind of definition to be somehow abstract, one should 
be able to write a text to Og Ruby code translator pretty easily and 
then one could convert the above text to above code for run-time 
evaluation without great pains.

So again I making a question what's this all for? What do we gain by 
adding an extra layer needing conversion?

What I can see that we're losing by using pure text (ini-file based or 
not) data definition mini-language is the ability to use 
turing-complete, working, easy, simple and useful full language to 
describe a bit more complex issues. And do so even without having text 
to code to datastructures conversion library source code, just by 
extending where Og left.

Should you need to write to logfile every time object's accessor is 
used, you're free to define your own "property" method for definition 
language inside Ruby. Not to mention Og already supports Aspect Oriented 
way to inject code.

    - Aleksi