From: Mark Carter <cartermark46@...>
Date: 2005-02-15T21:54:53+09:00
Subject: Excited n00b

I jobby out VBA code for a living, although I use python wherever I can. 
I thought I'd try out Ruby to see what all the fuss was about.

So far, I'm impressed. Here's a little proggy that I knocked out to dump 
the table structure of a database:

require 'win32ole'

def schema()
   @MDB_FILE_NAME = "C:\\mcarter\\srel\\2292-Stargate\\demo.mdb"

   # Create the object
   conn=WIN32OLE.new("ADODB.Connection")
   conn.ConnectionString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data 
Source=\"#{@MDB_FILE_NAME}\""
   conn.open

 
#http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ado270/htm/mdmthopenschema.asp
 
#http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ado270/htm/mdcstschemaenum.asp
   adSchemaTables = 20 #constant
   rs = conn.OpenSchema(adSchemaTables)
   rs.MoveFirst if !rs.eof
   while !rs.eof
     yield rs
     rs.MoveNext
   end
   rs.close()
   conn.close
end

schema { | table |
   puts "NEW TABLE"
   for field in  table.Fields
     puts "%-15s %10s" % [field.name, field.value]
   end
   puts
}



OK, it could do with some refactoring, but I was just trying to get 
something working. I think that impresses me about this block stuff is 
that it's a really neat way to hide messy implementation details. ADODB 
has a slightly strange way of iterating over records (the !rs.eof bit); 
but that doesn't matter because it's all hidden away. I just iterate 
over the recordset like it was a normal list.

I'm tempted to stick around to see what other goodies Ruby has in store.

What I'm actually trying to do is read a database, bump the date values 
of some of the fields, create some new records, and put the result into 
a new database. Before I completely re-invent the wheel, is there a ruby 
library that is likely to be of assistance?