On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 01:07:33AM +0300, Sawyer X wrote: > On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Tim Bunce <[1]tim.bu...@pobox.com> wrote: > > "Data" is fairly meaningless as a name. The Data:: is intended to be > used for modules that work with abstract data values: Data::Bind, > Data::Bucket, Data::BitMask, Data::COW etc. > > Thank you for taking the time to comment! > > Meanwhile, while writing all the docs in order to be able to release > properly to CPAN, I've also renamed > it to Data::Collector. I think it's a more accurate term than > Data::Scanner, since it doesn't really > "scan" anything. It provides a small framework for collecting information. > > There's a Sys:: namespace that has things like Sys::Info. (Perhaps you > could integrate with that.) > > Even though I will be using this in a system environment (trying to get > information on the system - > where Sys::Info might be useful), Data::Collector was built with > flexibility in mind, and can be used > for things not related to a system at all. > > You could write Data::Collector::Info::Dilbert to have a piece of info > that fetches Dilbert comics, for > example. You could have a Data::Collector::Info::MyCorpIncCustomerInfo and > so on. Pretty much like > plugins so anything homegrown can be used with it without altering > anything. I reckon that's why > settling down to a specific type of data will not be right. > > Generally speaking the more specialized the module the more > words-per-level the name should have. > > I reckon that is why Sys::Collector is probably not a good bet, since it's > not necessarily system > information. > It gets even trickier since the data can be returned in various forms > (XML, JSON, Data::Dumper. YAML, > Perl objects - these I had already implemented as Data::Collector core > serializing engines along the > way). > > Thanks again, I appreciate the response, it helped me understand it more. > > "Abstract data values" seems like what I'm going for, so it looks like a > good match.
"You could write Data::Collector::Info::Dilbert to have a piece of info that fetches Dilbert comics". That's far from abstract in the sense that Data:: was indended for. I believe you're thinking of what I'd call "generic", and you called it a "framework" yourself. On CPAN frameworks, especially generic ones with plugins etc., are encouraged to have "brand names". Think Catalyst, Mojo, Smolder, Plack, Dist::Zilla to name a few off the top of my head. Posting the docs may help. Tim.
