I am close to uploading release 0.02 of my framework, now called "Rosetta" (pending registration). There were numerous significant updates. Following is a copy of my new "Abstract" documentation, which tries to explain what the framework does in as concise a way as possible. It will appear just beneath "Name" in my POD. Hopefully this will give you a better idea where I am heading than my previous summaries did, and what is more unique about my offering. Thank you in advance for any feedback you can provide. -- Darren Duncan
P.S. I am still doing design and documentation of the framework. I do not know yet how much of its functionality can be done by existing CPAN modules that I can "use" (SQL parsers or generators come to mind, or extractors of schema from existing databases); note that I am already committed to DBI/DBD* for implementing the binary database connections, where possible. I welcome any suggestions for good modules to use; in particular, any SQL parsers need to handle recursive SQL like complex selects that use subqueries, unions, derived tables, and so forth, or I would have to do that myself. ---------------------------------- The Rosetta framework is intended to support complex (or simple) database-using Perl 5 applications that are easily portable across databases because all common product-specific details are abstracted away. Rosetta is designed to natively handle (interface to or implement) a superset of generic RDBMS product features, so that you can do any action that you could before, including standard data manipulation (including complex multi-table selects or updates with subqueries or stored procedure calls), and schema manipulation (tables, views, procedures). At the same time, it is designed to do its work quickly and efficiently. The native interface of Rosetta (RNI) is unique to itself and verbose, being designed to use non-ambiguous structured definitions of all tasks; all input is multi-dimensional data structures (or objects) having atomic values, rather than strings to be parsed. It is intended primarily for a data-driven application programming model, where an application uses a "data dictionary" to control what work it is doing (whose composite values map directly). For cases where you don't already have a data dictionary, Rosetta can scan your existing database to create one. That said, Rosetta also includes emulators (which sit on RNI) for common existing database interfaces, so that most Perl applications can simply use Rosetta as a hot-swappable replacement for them; you do not have to "learn yet another language" or re-code your application in order for it to just work with more databases. Add-on utilities are also available for the likes of copying or backing up a database, or editing one through a web interface (like PHPMyAdmin but for Perl and any RDBMS).
