Thread: advocacy: drupal and PostgreSQL

Hi,

Among Drupal developer there is such kind of discussion over and over
recently:

http://drupal4hu.com/node/64

I'd be too PostgreSQL biased to comment further... my point of view
is not too different from the one expressed by Steve Rude at the
bottom of the page.

Furthermore I think that developing in such a MySQLish centric way
will make MUCH harder to support any other DB not only PostgreSQL and
freedom of choice is very important to me.

I'd ask to all the people actually using drupal with PostgreSQL to
vote here:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/6164

and maybe add some comment if they use Drupal in some interesting way.

If any developer is also interested in helping the project move
further with better PostgreSQL support I think it will be welcome by
most drupal community.

Here are the open issues related to PostgreSQL:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980

thanks

--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it

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On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:12:07 +0100
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo <mail@webthatworks.it> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Among Drupal developer there is such kind of discussion over and over
> recently:
> 
> http://drupal4hu.com/node/64

I commented here. 

> I'd ask to all the people actually using drupal with PostgreSQL to
> vote here:
> 
> http://groups.drupal.org/node/6164


But I am not going to vote.

> 
> and maybe add some comment if they use Drupal in some interesting way.
> 
> If any developer is also interested in helping the project move
> further with better PostgreSQL support I think it will be welcome by
> most drupal community.
> 
> Here are the open issues related to PostgreSQL:
> http://groups.drupal.org/node/6980
> 

Reviewing


> thanks
> 


- -- 
The PostgreSQL Company: Since 1997, http://www.commandprompt.com/ 
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564   24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
SELECT 'Training', 'Consulting' FROM vendor WHERE name = 'CMD'


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On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:

> Furthermore I think that developing in such a MySQLish centric way
> will make MUCH harder to support any other DB not only PostgreSQL and
> freedom of choice is very important to me.

Having helped out a bit getting Postnuke working better with PostgreSQL, I
can tell you that didn't go far until the developers really embraced using
ADOdb and were targeting >2 engines at once (MS SQL was the other one they
really worked on).

The only work I've seen for Drupal with similar focus all involves the PDO
library, as alluded to in the post you mentioned:

http://drupal.org/node/134580
http://edin.no-ip.com/html/?q=code_siren_unofficial_drupal_6_x_database_driver_supporting

The problem with PDO is that it requires PHP5, which means it will be
years until it's on enough shared hosts etc. that the mainstream Drupal
version can require it.

I'm not really surprised that their developers are sick of the one hack at
a time approach to supporting PostgreSQL, but it seems quite some time
before they'll have something better, or that they'll support even more
storage engines.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

On Tuesday 15 January 2008 21:00, Greg Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
> > Furthermore I think that developing in such a MySQLish centric way
> > will make MUCH harder to support any other DB not only PostgreSQL and
> > freedom of choice is very important to me.
>
> Having helped out a bit getting Postnuke working better with PostgreSQL, I
> can tell you that didn't go far until the developers really embraced using
> ADOdb and were targeting >2 engines at once (MS SQL was the other one they
> really worked on).
>
> The only work I've seen for Drupal with similar focus all involves the PDO
> library, as alluded to in the post you mentioned:
>
> http://drupal.org/node/134580
> http://edin.no-ip.com/html/?q=code_siren_unofficial_drupal_6_x_database_dri
>ver_supporting
>
> The problem with PDO is that it requires PHP5, which means it will be
> years until it's on enough shared hosts etc. that the mainstream Drupal
> version can require it.
>

There's been a big move in the php community to push people towards php5 (one
of which was EOL of php4), which has started to pay off.  I'd guess that if
they wanted to, they could switch to PDO with Drupal 7 and not hurt
themselves too much.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Robert Treat wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 January 2008 21:00, Greg Smith wrote:

> There's been a big move in the php community to push people towards php5 (one
> of which was EOL of php4), which has started to pay off.  I'd guess that if
> they wanted to, they could switch to PDO with Drupal 7 and not hurt
> themselves too much.
>

When I spoke with Dries about this issue one of the big hold backs
wasn't PHP 4 but actually MySQL 3. When Drupal 6, MySQL 3 is not longer
supported. So they can actually do some nicer stuff (like foreign keys)
etc..

I am sure that with PHP5 things will improve as well.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Robert Treat wrote:
>
>> There's been a big move in the php community to push people towards
>> php5 (one of which was EOL of php4), which has started to pay off.
>> I'd guess that if they wanted to, they could switch to PDO with
>> Drupal 7 and not hurt themselves too much.
>
> When I spoke with Dries about this issue one of the big hold backs
> wasn't PHP 4 but actually MySQL 3. When Drupal 6, MySQL 3 is not
> longer supported. So they can actually do some nicer stuff (like
> foreign keys) etc..
>
> I am sure that with PHP5 things will improve as well.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake
>
Let me just sneak in a quick rant here, from somebody who really doesn't
matter.

We run drupal for our corporate intranet (currently being built) and we
use postgreSQL as the backend. Some of the modules and things don't work
perfectly, but drupal supported it and that made me happy enough to work
with it. Now after reading this garbage, I'm extremely disappointed.
Completely dropping postgresql capability might not affect them too
largely in the huge run, because a large amount of their user base is
using mySQL, but it would send a message to those of us that believe in
choice. I'm afraid that they're choosing the route of convenience over
their users, and every time I think about it I want to go looking for
replacements.

It'd be easier to build drupal to only run on mySQL, but then again it'd
be easy to build postgreSQL to only run on linux and forget about the
windows users. I know it's not their duty to make drupal work with
postgresql, but if they drop it like they're talking about, I'll be
making a push here and to everyone I know who uses drupal to switch to
another system, whether they're running postgres or not. If drupal 6
absolutely doesn't support postgres, then I'm dropping my drupal 5
install on the spot. This is a cold move drupal, and you should be ashamed.

Sorry, I'll end the rant here.

BTW, I'm a PHP developer who uses postgreSQL almost exclusively and I'm
on this list as well as other postgres lists constantly (even if as a
reader most of the time). If they have this big of an issue, why not ask
for help?

--
Tom Hart
IT Specialist
Cooperative Federal
723 Westcott St.
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 471-1116 ext. 202
(315) 476-0567 (fax)

In response to Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org>:

> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Robert Treat wrote:
> >
> >> There's been a big move in the php community to push people towards
> >> php5 (one of which was EOL of php4), which has started to pay off.
> >> I'd guess that if they wanted to, they could switch to PDO with
> >> Drupal 7 and not hurt themselves too much.
> >
> > When I spoke with Dries about this issue one of the big hold backs
> > wasn't PHP 4 but actually MySQL 3. When Drupal 6, MySQL 3 is not
> > longer supported. So they can actually do some nicer stuff (like
> > foreign keys) etc..
> >
> > I am sure that with PHP5 things will improve as well.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Joshua D. Drake
>
> Let me just sneak in a quick rant here, from somebody who really doesn't
> matter.
>
> We run drupal for our corporate intranet (currently being built) and we
> use postgreSQL as the backend. Some of the modules and things don't work
> perfectly, but drupal supported it and that made me happy enough to work
> with it. Now after reading this garbage, I'm extremely disappointed.
> Completely dropping postgresql capability might not affect them too
> largely in the huge run, because a large amount of their user base is
> using mySQL, but it would send a message to those of us that believe in
> choice. I'm afraid that they're choosing the route of convenience over
> their users, and every time I think about it I want to go looking for
> replacements.

I run my personal site on Drupal+PostgreSQL.  If Drupal drops PG support,
I'll switch the front-end.  I'm not switching the back end.

I'm also planning a small enterprise that I was originally considering
using Drupal for.  I'm now more seriously considering Bricolage.

However, read on ...

> It'd be easier to build drupal to only run on mySQL, but then again it'd
> be easy to build postgreSQL to only run on linux and forget about the
> windows users. I know it's not their duty to make drupal work with
> postgresql, but if they drop it like they're talking about, I'll be
> making a push here and to everyone I know who uses drupal to switch to
> another system, whether they're running postgres or not. If drupal 6
> absolutely doesn't support postgres, then I'm dropping my drupal 5
> install on the spot. This is a cold move drupal, and you should be ashamed.

I made a post on the drupal-devel list to this effect.  I got chewed out
for "flaming" Karoly ... who's obviously some big Drupal code guru.

Frankly, every time this topic comes up, it's initiated by Karoly, and
I've lost patience with the crap, so I unsubscribed.

If I can get my life back in order, I'll re-subscribe some time in Feb,
and hopefully start to do something productive, like contribute testing
and patches.

> Sorry, I'll end the rant here.
>
> BTW, I'm a PHP developer who uses postgreSQL almost exclusively and I'm
> on this list as well as other postgres lists constantly (even if as a
> reader most of the time). If they have this big of an issue, why not ask
> for help?

If you read through the thread, it's just Karoly and a few other minor
players in the Drupal community.  Many people have stepped up and said,
"I _do_ test on PostgreSQL, so what are you complaining about?"

As best I can tell, Karoly writes patches, and when they don't work on
PostgreSQL and therefore don't get committed right away, he starts this
argument up on the Drupal lists yet again.  The guy is a whiner who has
a personal axe to grind and seems unable to accept that Drupal wants to
run on more than just MySQL.  If he loves MySQL so much, he should join
a project that only supports MySQL and leave the Drupal people to their
work.  There's a LOT of effort in the Drupal community to build code
abstractions that will make the system database-agnostic, and Karoly's
constant whining is simply counterproductive.

To a large degree, I think Karoly has blown the situation out of
proportion.  Look at how it affects _this_ list every time he starts
bitching, for example.

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com

Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org>:
>
>
>>
>> Let me just sneak in a quick rant here, from somebody who really doesn't
>> matter.
>>
>> We run drupal for our corporate intranet (currently being built) and we
>> use postgreSQL as the backend. Some of the modules and things don't work
>> perfectly, but drupal supported it and that made me happy enough to work
>> with it. Now after reading this garbage, I'm extremely disappointed.
>> Completely dropping postgresql capability might not affect them too
>> largely in the huge run, because a large amount of their user base is
>> using mySQL, but it would send a message to those of us that believe in
>> choice. I'm afraid that they're choosing the route of convenience over
>> their users, and every time I think about it I want to go looking for
>> replacements.
>>
>
> I run my personal site on Drupal+PostgreSQL.  If Drupal drops PG support,
> I'll switch the front-end.  I'm not switching the back end.
>
> I'm also planning a small enterprise that I was originally considering
> using Drupal for.  I'm now more seriously considering Bricolage.
>
> However, read on ...
>
>
>> It'd be easier to build drupal to only run on mySQL, but then again it'd
>> be easy to build postgreSQL to only run on linux and forget about the
>> windows users. I know it's not their duty to make drupal work with
>> postgresql, but if they drop it like they're talking about, I'll be
>> making a push here and to everyone I know who uses drupal to switch to
>> another system, whether they're running postgres or not. If drupal 6
>> absolutely doesn't support postgres, then I'm dropping my drupal 5
>> install on the spot. This is a cold move drupal, and you should be ashamed.
>>
>
> I made a post on the drupal-devel list to this effect.  I got chewed out
> for "flaming" Karoly ... who's obviously some big Drupal code guru.
>
> Frankly, every time this topic comes up, it's initiated by Karoly, and
> I've lost patience with the crap, so I unsubscribed.
>
> If I can get my life back in order, I'll re-subscribe some time in Feb,
> and hopefully start to do something productive, like contribute testing
> and patches.
>
>
>> Sorry, I'll end the rant here.
>>
>> BTW, I'm a PHP developer who uses postgreSQL almost exclusively and I'm
>> on this list as well as other postgres lists constantly (even if as a
>> reader most of the time). If they have this big of an issue, why not ask
>> for help?
>>
>
> If you read through the thread, it's just Karoly and a few other minor
> players in the Drupal community.  Many people have stepped up and said,
> "I _do_ test on PostgreSQL, so what are you complaining about?"
>
> As best I can tell, Karoly writes patches, and when they don't work on
> PostgreSQL and therefore don't get committed right away, he starts this
> argument up on the Drupal lists yet again.  The guy is a whiner who has
> a personal axe to grind and seems unable to accept that Drupal wants to
> run on more than just MySQL.  If he loves MySQL so much, he should join
> a project that only supports MySQL and leave the Drupal people to their
> work.  There's a LOT of effort in the Drupal community to build code
> abstractions that will make the system database-agnostic, and Karoly's
> constant whining is simply counterproductive.
>
> To a large degree, I think Karoly has blown the situation out of
> proportion.  Look at how it affects _this_ list every time he starts
> bitching, for example.
>
>
Is it just Karoly (chx) who has all these things to say about pg? He's
just one person on the drupal team. Has anybody else in the core team
spoken out on this subject?

Let's keep in mind as well that this doesn't only affect pg users but
any other database as well that drupal supports or plans on supporting.
Drupal is pretty popular, and I expect there are a number of
organizations that don't fit in their mold of the "ideal drupal user".

I'd almost consider trying to take drupal and create a derivative
product and build in the pg and oracle and mssql, etc. support myself,
but if the drupal team really pulls a messed up move like this, I really
don't want to have anything to do with them anymore. It's not that I'm
that huge of a pg nut (I used mySQL for a while myself), but any team
that can turn it's back on that many of it's users to make their lives a
little easier isn't in it for the right reasons (the advancement of
technology, computing as a science, etc.). I am literally astonished
that they would even consider telling even 1% of their users "Take off,
you're too much work". How many drupal+postgres users are large
corporations, or regular donators? What about code contributors? How
many people are they looking at pissing off with a move like this?

Obviously emotion has gotten the better of me which is why I won't post
to the drupal boards/lists (I might be accused of flaming and I don't
want to paint the pgSQL community in a negative light), but I think that
somebody should let the drupal people know that we're still here and
we'd like to use the new drupal, just not on mySQL.

Oh, and a collective middle finger to anybody that says the pg community
is too small to bother with.

--
Tom Hart
IT Specialist
Cooperative Federal
723 Westcott St.
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 471-1116 ext. 202
(315) 476-0567 (fax)

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:03:43 -0500
Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org> wrote:

> Let me just sneak in a quick rant here, from somebody who really
> doesn't matter.
>
> We run drupal for our corporate intranet (currently being built)
> and we use postgreSQL as the backend. Some of the modules and
> things don't work perfectly, but drupal supported it and that made
> me happy enough to work with it. Now after reading this garbage,

Same here.

> I'm extremely disappointed. Completely dropping postgresql
> capability might not affect them too largely in the huge run,
> because a large amount of their user base is using mySQL, but it
> would send a message to those of us that believe in choice. I'm
> afraid that they're choosing the route of convenience over their
> users, and every time I think about it I want to go looking for
> replacements.

Same here.

I think Postgres is a great DB... but what upset me most is:
- missing freedom
- missing freedom

I'd explain better the 2 above point and add a 3rd one later.
- If you've just one choice it is nice it is Open, but having a
"competitor" is better
- once you go for one DB it will be extremely painful to go back and
the overall design of such a beast will suffer a lot

3rd point:
- going MySQL only may be OK for Joomla. Not for Drupal.
Drupal is halfway between a CMS and a framework. You can use to do
more than just showing semi-static pages. You can use it to deal with
money where transaction and ref. integrity is important and from the
point of view of a developer it is not yet a "comoditised" software.
Client are asking more than just install it on a hosting.

I've seen some of the problems Drupal has with Postgres and quite a
bunch are caused by absolutely unnecessary Mysqlisms.
Then when there are patches that require to fix badly written SQL
spread around people complain pg is holding the world back.

There are very smart developer some of whom (Larry Garfield, Edison
Wong) are actually going in the right direction without complaining
every now and then that pg is holding drupal back and drupal I think
is still the leader of a marketplace no body is in.
Joshua posted the link to Edison's project that can support pg, MS
SQL, Oracle, DB2(?)... but well I had the feeling that Edison is a bit
ostracised. While I wouldn't define his work a DB AL... well it works
so kudos!
Unfortunately 6.X should be out soon and his work won't be included
and it looks that 7.X infrastructure will be even better.

Maybe some people hope to get rich fast enough they won't have to
work with any other DB other than MySQL...

> postgres or not. If drupal 6 absolutely doesn't support postgres,

Thanks to schema api drupal 6 should support pg even better. But it is
half the work since the DB abstraction layer... is not abstract.
Substantially queries are passed to db_query as strings and "adapted"
with regexp.
Schema api uses array to define tables so you don't have to
serialise, unserialise, serialise queries and you have some metadata.
But... but... an DB abstraction layer is complicated and doesn't come
for free. Actually some people complain about the overhead of a DB AL
but then write awful SQL...
Anyway... well maybe adopting a full fledged ORM for 7.0 will
actually be too much... and writing one may take advantage of the
knowledge of underlying objects... but still be too much to be
written for 7.

> then I'm dropping my drupal 5 install on the spot. This is a cold
> move drupal, and you should be ashamed.

No... I just posted here so more people would be aware of the problem
and help correct it. I don't think drupal is really going to become
mono-db. It seems that even MS had some interest in porting drupal to
MS SQL... and there is actually a MS employee doing so...

Just I'd like it to be done better and faster and avoid to read the
same thing on drupal ML every 20 days or so ;)

> BTW, I'm a PHP developer who uses postgreSQL almost exclusively and
> I'm on this list as well as other postgres lists constantly (even
> if as a reader most of the time). If they have this big of an
> issue, why not ask for help?

Because some won't have any more excuse to write MySQLish SQL ;)
I think that people that use drupal on Postgres could get a bit more
involved in drupal all the project will gain *a lot* and not just
because of improved pg support but because pg people generally are
better DB guys knowing more than one DB and conscious of what a DB
can do and it is done for.


I know that what I'm writing worth nearly 0, but I'm terribly busy
(guess what...) with building up a module for drupal that will run
just on pg (sorry... I'm not going to put money in something that
discovered transactions just yesterday no matter how fast it is to
serve thousands semi-static pages and if I can find it even on South
Pole hosting, If I had to serve thousands static pages I'd consider
MySQL, really, but I'm not).

As soon as I wake up from this deadline nightmare I'll definitively
try to review and propose patches to offer a better support for pg
and I'm very interested in the DB AL for 7.

And no... it is not just Karoly but there are a couple of core dev
too that are a bit pissed off about how hard is to support more than 1
DB.

--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it

On Jan 17, 2008 1:43 PM, Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org> wrote:

> Obviously emotion has gotten the better of me which is why I won't post
> to the drupal boards/lists

Really, honestly, you're controlling it quite well.  Passion is fine.
As long as the lists stay civil, passion has its place.

> (I might be accused of flaming and I don't
> want to paint the pgSQL community in a negative light), but I think that
> somebody should let the drupal people know that we're still here and
> we'd like to use the new drupal, just not on mySQL.
>
> Oh, and a collective middle finger to anybody that says the pg community
> is too small to bother with.

I agree.

What gets me is the tortured logic I read in the post by nk on the
drupal board.  Two examples:

1: With MySQL 5.0 and 5.1, there's no need for pgsql
This statement shows that he knows nothing of the differences of the
two database engines of which he speaks.  And when you don't know
anything about a subject, it's best to ask someone who does.

2: There's only 5% of drupal users that use pgsql, therefore they
aren't important.
-- The fact that PostgreSQL isn't fully supported (i.e. some modules
don't work) and it STILL has a 5% user base in Drupal is actually a
testament to the pgsql userbase.  They're willing to climb uphill to
get drupal working on their chosen platform.  If drupal properly
support pgsql, it might well be a much higher percentage that chose to
run on top of pgsql.
-- Which users are those 5%?  Maybe they're the sites that really show
off drupal to the public, maybe they're internal sites for very large
corporates, or maybe they're sites that just need to make sure the
accounting is done right.

I just read Ivan's post, and I agree, it sounds like people who
learned bad habits on mysql and are now whinging about their mysql
inspired sql not working on other platforms.

I evaluated Drupal with PostgreSQL, but it wasn't powerful enough, and it's written in PHP which is buggy, and lots of modules force you to use MySQL which is not ACID (I'm sorry but inserting 31-Feb-2008 and not throwing an error by default makes you non-ACID in my book).  PostgreSQL support was spotty at best, and it sounds like one would have received precious little help from the Drupal community.

I plumped for Plone SQLAlchemy and Postgresql instead.

Alex

In response to Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org>:
> Bill Moran wrote:

[snip]

> > To a large degree, I think Karoly has blown the situation out of
> > proportion.  Look at how it affects _this_ list every time he starts
> > bitching, for example.
> >
> >
> Is it just Karoly (chx) who has all these things to say about pg? He's
> just one person on the drupal team. Has anybody else in the core team
> spoken out on this subject?

Last time this came up (which was in Dec, I believe) a few other core
members jumped in eventually and said, "No, we're keeping PG.  The
goal of Drupal is to be database agnostic, so dropping PG is counter-
productive."  To which Karoly responded that he didn't want to _drop_
PG support, he just wanted to drop PG support ... or something equally
nonsensical.

The guy sets my "jerk" alarms ringing like a 5 alarm fire.  He doesn't
play well with others, he constantly starts fights, and he threatens
to take his ball and go home every time he loses.  I don't care how
much code he writes, I don't think he's worth the headache.

> Let's keep in mind as well that this doesn't only affect pg users but
> any other database as well that drupal supports or plans on supporting.
> Drupal is pretty popular, and I expect there are a number of
> organizations that don't fit in their mold of the "ideal drupal user".

As I said, I get the impression that most of the Drupal developers get
this, and they have mentioned more than once that Drupal's design goal
is to be database-agnostic.  It just seems to be Karoly and a few people
here and there that he's able to incite into riot.

> I'd almost consider trying to take drupal and create a derivative
> product and build in the pg and oracle and mssql, etc. support myself,
> but if the drupal team really pulls a messed up move like this, I really
> don't want to have anything to do with them anymore. It's not that I'm
> that huge of a pg nut (I used mySQL for a while myself), but any team
> that can turn it's back on that many of it's users to make their lives a
> little easier isn't in it for the right reasons (the advancement of
> technology, computing as a science, etc.). I am literally astonished
> that they would even consider telling even 1% of their users "Take off,
> you're too much work". How many drupal+postgres users are large
> corporations, or regular donators? What about code contributors? How
> many people are they looking at pissing off with a move like this?

I'm upset with the community.  The other core members need to stand up
to Karoly and say, "You opinions are not those of the community, and
we'll ban you from the lists if you continue to start this fight over
and over again."

--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:52:37 -0500
"Alex Turner" <armtuk@gmail.com> wrote:

> I evaluated Drupal with PostgreSQL, but it wasn't powerful enough,
> and it's written in PHP which is buggy, and lots of modules force
> you to use MySQL which is not ACID (I'm sorry but inserting
> 31-Feb-2008 and not throwing an error by default makes you non-ACID
> in my book).  PostgreSQL support was spotty at best, and it sounds
> like one would have received precious little help from the Drupal
> community.
>
> I plumped for Plone SQLAlchemy and Postgresql instead.

It could be interesting.

Plone does look more "enterprise" oriented and python is a definitive
plus once you're not on hosting.
Other choices could be some form of RAD. I'd prefer the pythonic RAD.
Up to my memory some works on top of SQLAlchemy...

But still Drupal find itself in an interesting market place that is
not the one of Joomla neither the one of Plone and I think that in
that market place it fits better with PostgreSQL rather than MySQL.

I'd be interested in your experience with SQLAlchemy and how it fits
with pg.
I'm not that sure that a full fledged ORM fits with Drupal since it
is something in between a CMS and a framework so more flexible than a
CMS but less that a framework like Django so it would be better to
build up a DB AL around actual objects in drupal.
At least I'll try to find the time to read through SQLAlchemy to
learn.

OK... I'll stop to hijack pg list things that start to be just
tangential to postgres ;)

Many thanks to everybody who listened to the call.

--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it

At 4:11p -0500 on 17 Jan 2008, Bill Moran wrote:
> The guy sets my "jerk" alarms ringing like a 5 alarm fire.  He doesn't
> play well with others, he constantly starts fights, and he threatens
> to take his ball and go home every time he loses.  I don't care how
> much code he writes, I don't think he's worth the headache.

> As I said, I get the impression that most of the Drupal developers get
> this, and they have mentioned more than once that Drupal's design goal
> is to be database-agnostic.  It just seems to be Karoly and a few people
> here and there that he's able to incite into riot.

> I'm upset with the community.  The other core members need to stand up
> to Karoly and say, "You opinions are not those of the community, and
> we'll ban you from the lists if you continue to start this fight over
> and over again."

I recently ran across this video about "poisonous people" in open source
projects.  It's perhaps prudent.  It's about 55 minutes long.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645

Kevin

On jeu, 2008-01-17 at 21:25 +0100, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
> Joshua posted the link to Edison's project that can support pg, MS
> SQL, Oracle, DB2(?)... but well I had the feeling that Edison is a bit
> ostracised. While I wouldn't define his work a DB AL... well it works
> so kudos!
> Unfortunately 6.X should be out soon and his work won't be included
> and it looks that 7.X infrastructure will be even better.
>
> Maybe some people hope to get rich fast enough they won't have to
> work with any other DB other than MySQL...
>

I registered myself on Drupal devel mailing list and offered my services
to fix