Re: gnome-db

[Rodrigo Moya <rmoya tsai es>]

bob@cs.csoft.net wrote:

> Other then the graphic gnome-db widgets, wich I cant use due to it being a
> console server, you havent told me any benifits that it has over libodbc.

You said in your first mail that you were making your app database independant.
This is one of the key features of gnome-db.

>
> In fact, it has a fiew things that would hinder preformance. I need a good
> strong sql driver, so I would have to use
> gnome-db->libiodbc->myodbc->mysql.

You could also have: gnome-db->mysql by using the native MySQL driver, which does
not use libiodbc. Of course, a loss of performance will occur, since there are all
the CORBA calls around, but as ORBit is extremely fast, it could be quite small.
But you're right, if you need high performance you may want to use native API
calls, but not ODBC, which IMO may be as slow/fast as gnome-db->mysql

> Also, the requirement of the gnome library would be another
> preformance hit.

You are right here, you will depend on gnome-libs, gnome-print, libxml... but only
if you use the client APIs (see below)

> Everything you just told me can be done directly by iodbc
> itself. What exactly is gnome-db's purpose? Why not use the indestry
> standard odbc? Does gnome-db have a better API? If so, why not just add a
> companion library? It just seems to me that there are too many db projects
> that should be reunified. Linux's database capabilities are lacking
> compared to windows because of the strong tie in of odbc to windows.
> Having linux and gnome support it, rather then making propriatatary api's
> would help us gain a good foothold in the enterprise market. gnome-db
> puzzles me. Gnome is the only desktop that seems to heavily use standards.
> XML and CORBA are good examples. Why then, is gnome not adopting ODBC?
> Is odbc just too crapy an api? Please tell me. I want to know if I am
> making a mistake by using iodbc. Sorry if it sounds like I am ripping on
> you or gnome-db. I'm not. I am just confused.
>
>

gnome-db purpose is to provide a framework for accessing databases (= any other
data source, such as plain text files, mailboxes....) from within gnome apps. This
includes a client API, a lib of data-bound widgets, a complete building framework
for building gnome-db servers and clients, .... and the core, which is composed of
simple CORBA servers. And we use standards: CORBA, XML, ODBC itself...

And the gnome-db API is not "better" than ODBC's, it is quite similar (although a
bit easier IMO) and, right now, misses some features that will be present in future
releases. But this API is just a convenience lib for making easier access to the
CORBA stuff (in fact, it is just a wrapper around CORBA with some extra
functionality such as caching and other things), the strong feature are the
database servers. So, you could bypass the client API and use directly the CORBA
servers by making a CORBA client. This will allow your app to be totally
database-independant and to not depend on gnome at all, you'll just have to write a
CORBA client in any language/ORB you like.

We support ODBC, but only supporting ODBC and not anything else is not a good idea
IMO, since as I said before, we want to offer access to different forms of data
sources apart from databases. So you want to use ODBC, you've got it, you want to
use Oracle native API, you've got it, you want to access plain text files, you
can...
ODBC is not so crappy, it is a well defined standard with, as you said, strong
integration on the windows world.

I hope all this answers your questions

Cheers