David Mintz wrote:
I'm at pains to ask at this point if we should question some of the basic assumptions of the MVC model.On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Dell Sala wrote:The other possibility is to look into existing DataObject frameworks that have already implemented the fancy stuff for you. I've used PEAR's DB_DataObject. It's a bit of a pain to get up an running, but it's solid. There are quite a few others -- here are a few:http://pear.php.net/package/DB_DataObject/ http://propel.phpdb.org/trac/ and CakePHP implements its own ActiveRecord http://cakephp.org/I was gonna say -- but didn't, for brevity's sake -- that I have spent several+ hours with Cake, and it does seem mighty cool, yet I've run into enough snags to wonder about the name. Like findAll() not fetching the data that I need and having to write custom SQL anyway. Underneath MVC is usually an ORM philosophy, whether it is stated or implied. The ORM philosophy tries to cast tables into OO terms, and IMHO this is why the approach tends to produce at least as much work as it eliminates. In fact, the data tables are fully encapsulated by the database server and do not need to be encapsulated further into classes. Doing so introduces obfuscations which then must be un-obfuscated, so author ends up doing work to do accomplish an unnecessary goal, which then requires further work to undo. By contrast, a generalized query-by-form is far easier to write by approaching it as a simple function that need only know a table name, and the column types and widths. It does the same thing for every table otherwise. You can put it into a class if you like, but it works just as well as a library routine. As an example of this, check out one of the apps we will be demoing at Tuesday's Andromeda presentation: http://dhost2.secdat.com/demo_peds Username and password are both "guest". Look at the menu on the left, skip the first two entries "ProcedureDiagnosis X Ref" and "Claims" and look at the next few entries, "Procedure Codes", "Prodedure Groups" and so forth. Each of these tables is pure zero-code, not even a three-line class declaration went into any of them. Other more interesting tables are much lower on the menu, particularly "Carriers", which contains real data, and "Families". We're loading fake data to the "Families" and "Family Members" also. |
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