From: ES <ruby-ml@...>
Date: 2005-10-26T11:12:29+09:00
Subject: Re: The "perfect" ORM?

> For many weeks I have had this at the back of my mind.
>
> I want a really good ORM that is highly non-intrusive
> (e.g., I don't have to inherit and I don't have to
> clutter my classes and objects with metadata).
>
> Someone told me that this was much the way Hibernate
> works in Java. I can't comment.
>
> So anyway, this is one of my highest priorities -- to
> make an ORM (that works the way I like) to wrap
> KirbyBase. (With additional code, it should/could wrap
> any other db, of course.)
>
> Logan's KirbyRecord was a step in the right direction,
> it seemed to me. But it was like ActiveRecord -- it
> forced you to store your metadata in your own objects.
>
> Og is cool, but is even more intrusive.
>
> In case anyone is morbidly curious, I want this so that
> I can continue work on Tycho without getting bogged
> down in data storage issues. (Someone teased me at the
> conference that a year had gone by, and Tycho still
> hadn't progressed any. And he wonders how that spider
> got in his salad.)
>
> Anyhow: Who knows Hibernate and can comment on its
> usefulness as a model?
>
> And who if anyone is interested in working on this
> project?

I greatly specify code defining the database (Og)
versus having to deal with the DB directly (AR).

Using ruby's capabilities it would be fairly easy to create
a completely implicit ORM (obj.instance_variables etc.) even
without subclassing --this is not really a problem. The
problem is the corner cases where, for  example, an instance
variable contains transient data which is not useful (or even
counterproductive) when  stored so typically some way of either
opting in or out is desirable to have. The other issue may be
managing relationships between the stored objects.

That said, I would be happy to contribute what I can
towards such an interface.

> Thanks,
> Hal

E