From: Sam Smoot <ssmoot@...>
Date: 2008-04-17T01:30:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there a One True Postgres interface? Is Ruby-postgresmaintained?

On Apr 16, 9:39 am, Phillip Gawlowski <cmdjackr...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
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> Thomas Kellerer wrote:
>
> | The Postgres JDBC driver is 100% Java and definitely does not rely on
> | any external DLLs or libraries, it speaks the native PG protocol (AFAIK
> | there is no such thing as a "Java interface"). So why shouldn't this be
> | possible with Ruby as well?
>
> Because Ruby doesn't really compare to Java in terms of infrastructure
> and APIs?
>
> Both Ruby and the database you want to speak to have to provide an API
> to do that (JDBC is a Java API, and still needs the proper connectors to
> actually talk to the database, similar to ODBC).
>
> It is not yet possible with Ruby (except via Ruby/DL, I've heard), but
> it certainly could be.
>
> So, up to trying to do something like that? ;P
>
> At the moment, you have to hook into C somehow, or wrap a C/C++
> extension to pull that off. Which is certainly possible, as the various
> DB-gems show.
>
> However, since Ruby has no ready-made API for hooking up DB connectors
> and all that stuff, the job has be done over and over again, for each DB
> Ruby shall support.
>
> And, IMO, adding such an API, while nice, would be beyond Ruby's scope.
>
> And JRuby needs the JDBC libraries of, for example, MySQL to talk to a
> MySQL server. Those aren't part of Java's distribution. :|
>
> But the relative ease of installation makes JRuby very, very attractive
> to me when deploying Rails apps.
>
> Well, MySQL might become shipped as a standard, since Sun bought out
> MySQL, but you never know..
>
> Long story short: It's not impossible to define a standard API for Ruby,
> but somebody has to do it yet (don't look at me, C makes me scream).
>
> - --
> Phillip Gawlowski
> Twitter: twitter.com/cynicalryan
>
> ~ - You know you've been hacking too long when...
> ..you want to retract something said in haste, and think C-a C-@ C-e C-w
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This is exactly the goal of the DataObjects project. It's a simple,
bare, unified API for Sqlite3, MySQL, and Postgres. ADO.NET and JDBC
bridges are planned as well...