Jochen Wiedmann wrote:
on the DBD::mysql mailing list came up the suggestion for installing aI like the idea. We should think carefully about what already exists and clearly differentiate what we are doing from the other efforts. The similar projects that I know about which already exist are PerlMonks, cpan.forum, and rt.cpan.org. Perlmonks (as I assume most of you know) is a longstanding Perl online community with a huge amount of DBI-related information (and some DBI-related misinformation :-)). Personally, I (aka jZed on PerlMonks) find PerlMonks to be a real community - although there is some flaming, trolling, insulting, it is very much minimized compared to say the average usenet forum. The questions and answers on PerlMonks run the gamut from complete beginners to people like Perrin and Michael Peppler who provide real depth. Cpan.forum is fairly new and I haven't used it much but it appears to have the infrastructure to deal with many modules. Rt.cpan is not quite the same thing, but I mention it because we, as authors, need to already keep our eyes on rt.cpan, dbi-users, PerlMonks and the idea of yet another place is somewhat daunting.
Wiki somewhere.
I will say that I have been preparing a mini-wiki for the purposes of _Programming the Perl DBI_ 2nd edition - and Tim and I will have to give a think about whether it should be merged with your suggestion. The two parts I have almost ready to go on line are 1) a DBI links page that gathers links to products that make use of DBI - there are hundreds of opensource and proprietary projects that use DBI but the only way to find that out in many cases is to read the installation instructions. I have a pretty large list, but it needs additions so I was wanting to open it up as both a resource for the community and as a way to get some assistance tracking down some of the unknown uses of DBI. 2) The second part, and this one is more clearly book related than DBI-in-general related is a survey of DBI developers and users. I'll be asking sociological questions and also quesions about the development process for a "Tales from the Trenches" chapter in the book which is meant to highlight both the breadth of the technological uses for DBI and something of the nature of the open source development process that has contributed to the making of DBI, the DBDs, and the other related modules.
-- Jeff
