Re: Database/DBD Bridging?

On Sep 21, 2011, at 7:53 PM, Brendan Byrd wrote:

> Okay, this is a big blue sky idea, but like all things open-source, it comes
> out of a need.  I'm trying to merge together Excel (or CSV), Oracle, Fusion
> Tables, JSON, and SNMP for various data points and outputs.  DBIC seems to
> work great for a large database with a bunch of tables, but what about a
> bunch of databases?  I've searched and searched, and nobody seemed to have
> designed a DBD for multiple DBDs.  There's DBD::Multi and Multiplex, but
> that's merely for replication.  This would require reparsing of SQL
> statements.

I think it'd be simpler to use something like SQL/MED. In PostgreSQL 9.1, for example, you can install foreign data wrappers so that you can create tables inside PostgreSQL that actually point to CSV, MySQL, Oracle, Redis, or any number of other sources. It's read-only right now, though that's often all people need. Some example FDWs:

 http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/file-fdw.html
 http://pgxn.org/tag/fdw

ISTR that SQL Server has had similar capabilities for a long time, and I know Access has. Hell, ODBC might get you a long way toward it.

In short, I think that a multi-backend DBD is probably the wrong level at which to do this, waay too much work.

Best,

David