From: Luis Lavena <luislavena@...>
Date: 2008-04-16T09:25:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a One True Postgres interface? Is Ruby-postgresmaintained?

On Apr 15, 9:08 pm, Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackr...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
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> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>
> |
> | At this stage of the game, I think a pure Ruby PostgreSQL (and MySQL)
> | interface has some serious advantages over struggling with numerous C
> | compilers for Windows, Mac, Solaris, etc.
>
> No kidding. Looking at the ruby-installer ML, most of the difficulties
> are with Ruby's *external* dependencies (readlines in particular).
>
> And these issues cascade, for example, into PostgreSQL (some OpenSSL
> dependency weirdness, I take it from Luis) in conjunction with Ruby.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't know how one should implement pure Ruby
> implementations since PostgreSQL and others would need to provide a Ruby
> interface (at least, as far as I can see). Ah, the joy of interop..
>

A pure ruby implementation involves:

Usage of Ruby/DL, which is a bridge between C API from DLL and Ruby
and lot of understanding of the internals of the adapter API.

Last time I used Ruby/DL was a nightmare since sometimes what
developers states they export quite differ from reality, so you ended
diggin into the utility source code to catch the expected result in
your side.

Lot of works, and still will be slower than a C ruby extension acting
as bridge between the DLL and your Ruby code.

> Sadly, when it comes to C, I'm an end-user of provided binaries, as C
> makes my head hurt just by reading C, so I can't be of much help to
> Luis' efforts. :(

Don't worry, I take a lot of painkillers after staring a C function
for a long period of time...

> I have to get some C skills under my belt, methinks.
>
> However, the OCI is making progress in switching away from VC6.0, though
> progress is slow.
>

I commented to Jeff he should ask for a Integration requrest and I can
help him get the adapter working on both implementations for the time
being.

Anyway, I'll love to know if Ruby on Rails will support this adapter
or not, since all the work will be useless if all the Railers came and
yell about their PostgreSQL database don't work for them :-P

Regards,
--
Luis Lavena