On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 05:06:39PM -0800, Darren Duncan wrote: > This message is an RFC regarding Perl 6 and my proposed official successor > there for the current Perl 5 "DBI" module, and in particular for usage of > the "DBI" namespace.
> I believe that now is the time for a serious look at having an official > "DBI" for Perl 6. It's always been that time :) I disagree about "an" and "official" though. I'd much prefer to see some real discussion (i.e. more than one person actively involved) and some real code, rather than cannonize any vaporware or any particular early experiments. I think it's fair to say that the DBI has been reasonably successful. That was due, in part, to the fact several people spent a good year or so discussing and designing the spec, then spent another year or so refining it as we worked on prototypes (DBI and DBD::Oracle). > I have already been working on a "Perl 6 DBI" or "Plack for databases" for > awhile now, and in a few weeks I should be ready to show it off for > evaluation. But in the meantime, I was hoping to get Tim Bunce and other > community stakeholders on board with its philosophy and get a blessing to > use the name "DBI" for it. Nope. Sorry. My position, FWIW, is the same as it was in this thread from Feb 2015: http://markmail.org/message/oavyl5l4dlme5dft which refers to this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/Tim.Bunce/perl6-dbdi-yapceu-201008 > In this message I will outline a few main points to start off the > discussion, and other details can follow in the near future. > That is, the new "DBI" would actually just be an API > specification document for a duck-typing/etc API that conforming libraries > and applications would implement for themselves. Which is also true for the "DBDI" proposed in the presentation. It's an interface definition that follows closely the JDBC API. (Which is mature, well documented, with a test suite, lots of books, lots of people with experience, and maps well to underlying database client library APIs. All *very* significant plusses.) There's no need for any implementation of a DBDI interface to share code with any other. > Does this sound like a proposal you can get behind, You don't need me to get behind it. Write some code, get people to help, build a team then a community. Anyone else can do the same. Give it any name you like for now. You can always rename it if it gains traction. (The DBI was called DBperl for the first couple of years.) > is it okay to use "DBI" for the name reserved for the specification There's no need for that. I think I'd prefer if nothing used "DBI". (Except, one day, something that provided a very-DBI-like API over whatever has been adopted by the wider community as a database API.) Using it now, on an unproven experiment, seems like a poor idea. > do you have any questions or counter-proposals, and so on? Write some code, get people to help, build a team. Give it any name you like. Write a test suite. Release early, release often. Make it correct and make it fast. Have fun. Good luck! :) Tim.
