I've developed a substantial Object-Relational mapping layer for a
current job. My client is amenable to releasing the code under a LGPL
license, if there is interest in the community in pitching in to
develop the code further. So I'm here to ask: who would be interested
in helping to develop this code?
The code as it stands will work with a custom database (it uses
column naming conventions to assist in the mapping), and uses
Operator_Lookup to assist with the mapping.
The code maps tables (other than many:many join tables) to classes.
By using Operator_Lookup, column names in the database are
automatically converted to properties, and the code tracks
modifications to properties, so only objects and properties that have
been modified are written back out to the database. Writing to the
database is a single call with no arguments; the code using the data
layer objects just uses them. The call to write the changes out could
potentially be called from a timer (although you would really want to
use a thread rather than a timer, and I've not finished making the
code thread safe).
The current code also deals with joins (one:many and many:many). A
join appears as a Set on one or both ends, and changes to one end are
copied automatically to the other end.
Absent weak references, the current code needs to keep objects in
memory once instantiated (but if there was significant interest in
this project, it might prompt more requests for weak references,
hastening this important feature's arrival).
The code could be developed in many ways: making it work without the
column naming (so with any database); implementing the periodic,
threaded flush (so you could just forget about explicitly saving);
having more of the SQL automatically generated; making it work with
more SQL dialects than SQLite; using IDE scripting to make the
boilerplate code more auto-generated; supporting other data source
types (SOAP, XML, ...). Interestingly, this framework would fairly
cleanly form the basis of a networked server framework, where one
REALbasic application serves up the data to many others.
So: who, if anyone, would be interested in pitching in to improve
this framework?
Guyren G Howe
guyren-at-relevantlogic.com
http://relevantlogic.com
REALbasic, PHP, Python programming
PostgreSQL, MySQL database design and consulting
Technical writing and training
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