Re: [gnome-db] Re: question: in memory table representation: please help

[Neil Zanella <nzanella gmail com>]

:-) :-) :-)

Thank you for your reply!

Yes, what I am developing is similar in spirit, but I the overall
design is different.
Basically, my engine is different, just like there can be different
game engines,
there are going to be different GUI to DB engines I guess. And eventually
someone is going to generalize all of everyone's ideas and create a really
big and versatile GUI engine.

Basically, like a game engine is designed with specific game categories in mind,
so is a GUI to database engine. So there you have it. Anyways, coding a couple
of XML parsers with libxml should not be a big deal, so I don't need to look at
their code. Once my library is refactored and my app runs, then I will consider
contacting them and see what more can be done.

For now, there are features I'm implementing that I just don't see there.
The site seems to have the right idea but lacks applications demonstrating
the usability of their library. By contrast I am building a library based on a
real application. IMHO it makes a difference. Libraries should be designed
based on the needs of real applications, not the other way round. In most
cases it seems impractical to build the library after you've built the
application, but the reality is that unless you build an application
first you will have a hard time envisioning the right patterns to
implement in your library. So there you have it. The downside
is that when most people finish building their apps they don't
spend the time to refactor a library out of it. Well that's just
too bad, but to do it well you must go the hard way.

Regards,

Neil

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 08:39:07 -0600, Daniel Espinosa Ortiz
<esodan yahoo com mx> wrote:
> Please, check for QOF and DWI for information about a librarys doing
> some thing like you want.
> 
> http://www.gnucash.org/
> http://dwi.sourceforge.net/
> http://qof.sourceforge.net/
> 
> And my post: "[gnome-db] DWI, QOF and gnome-db"
> 
> May can help you, or orient, or better you can help in both proyects
> (GDA, DWI and QOF)... I don't know, may be..
> 
> El vie, 29-10-2004 a las 22:49, Neil Zanella escribió:
> 
> 
> > > On Wed, 2004-10-27 at 16:07 -0600, Neil Zanella wrote:
> >
> > > so, what are you exactly trying to do? Why do you want that in-memory
> > > representation of the table?
> >
> > Because I'm writing a very special library to do something never seen or done
> > before... it's somewhat complicated to explain, but I will try...
> > (right now it works
> > quite well, just that it's not implemented as a library) :-)
> >
> > --- BACKGROUND ---------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The name of the new library, libsqlui, comes from the fact that its users, whom
> > will be aquainted with XML and SQL, but not necessarily C, use three XML
> > files to build the specifics of their user interface. The three files correspond
> > to the three parts of MVC. The library I am building aims at building a generic
> > controller with pluggable methods customizable via an XML file.
> >
> > The controller allows the user to relate generic database tables to the user
> > interface by interrelating data and widgets by neat of neat and clean API.
> >
> > Basically, I'm taking some of the burden from the C of MVC off the user's
> > back and plugging it in my special library.
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > So, I need an in memory representtion of tables, cause these will allow
> > my library to construct them so it can talk with my users. My users will
> > be specifying table representations more than anything else when
> > building their GUIs. (BTW, all of this is already done basically,
> > just needs to be cleaned up, and moved to GNOME-DB for
> > maximum portability. It just seems to me that libgda is the
> > best choice for the task at hand. Just that I don't know
> > how much of what I need it's going to support, but
> > whatever is missing I'm gonna have to recode
> > myself. There's not much to debate here: I've
> > already built the system and it works, and is
> > as a matter of fact a pleasure to use, but
> > now I want it to make use of libgda.
> >
> > > If you want to get data from a database, use the gda_connection_*
> > > functions, no need to deal with GdaTable, which is only, as you noted,
> > > an in-memory representation of a table. You can either create it from an
> > > existing GdaDataModel (gda_table_new_from_model), or create it by hand,
> > > in which case you need to add all fields, set all attributes on the
> > > fields, add the data (gda_data_model_append_row), etc
> >
> > I plan to let my library call those functions so the user of my library
> > dosen't need to worry about much programming at all: the user worries
> > about concepts, and the library carries out the specifics. ;-)
> >
> > Actually, it's not as complex as it sounds... I'm just exploiting the power
> > of generic programming in an area where it has not yet been applied.
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > So please let me know whether I can access libgda's in memory table
> > representations (in which case, please let me know how to use them),
> > or whether I should reinvent the wheel.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Neil
> >
> > P.S. my library is going to be open source and will accomodate behavioral
> > patterns conceived by other users so long as they can explain them and there
> > are enough developers willing to code them.
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-db-list mailing list
> > gnome-db-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-db-list
> --
> Daniel Espinosa Ortiz <esodan yahoo com mx>
> 
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