Brandon Goodin wrote:
I don't plan on promoting any templating languages. It offloads the burden to another layer. The dyanmic conditionals would get out of hand. At that point it would be far easier to handle things in java. The heirarchal nature of xml is of great importance to dynamic sql. So, i still see it as being the easiest means to manage the SQL. If you are using a template language you already violate the verasity of your sql outside of ibatis. So, < is a minor issue IMO.
I know it's not a huge deal, but seeing my queries use alot of < and > and not to mention <= i find it adds an extra 0.5 sec each time i read my sql for my brain to do the conversion. This of course doesn't seem like much time but it gets to you after a while.
I guess it's always been a bit of a merry go round. First the sql is strung together in java with all the power of a programming language, then it's moved out to a separate template because the code got to messy. Then we start adding simple programming constructs into the template because we needed the flexibility. We keep adding constructs until oops the template starts looking like a programming language and we start moving some of our logic back into our java code.
This kinda sounds like HTML templating and it's always been a measure of taste vs complexity when people decide on their templating solution of choice. I'm not sure what my point is, but I see the ibatis semi-templating of SQL will only increase in complexity as the user base grows.
In version 3.0 one of our goals is to remove the dependency on the configuration being solely XML and allow for java based configuraiton. This would mean that the xml would be a way to implement the configuration. XML will continue to be the primary supported means of configuration because there are so many reasons to continue in this direction versus other templating languages. But, in the future if you so desire, it may be possible for you to contribute something cool with velocity. Personally, I don't think velocity would add value to the process.
Maybe you're right. I'll look into Freemarker :-) Huy
