get_info (was: Common DBI Driver Test Suite - Requirements)

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 09:12:09AM +0100, Martin J. Evans wrote:
> On 26/09/13 23:29, Tim Bunce wrote:

> >I'm expecting that one of the side-effects of DBIT will be a great
> >improvement in support for get_info by drivers. That'll be a win for all.
> 
> It definitely is a win. I can't even begin to tell you the pain I had
> writing DBD neutral code just for ODBC, Oracle, DB2, mysql and
> postgres. We persevered for some time but ended up with so much of the
> class methods overridden we ended up with effectively 5 different
> applications - although it did not look like it from the front. Once
> you include the SQL as well - it really is not fun and although I
> don't use DBIx::Class myself, it must be quite a piece of code. It
> will be so much nicer to do:

> if ($h->get_info(parameters_need_colons)) {
>   do this
> } else {
>   do this
> }
> 
> than
> 
> if ($h->{driver} eq 'Oracle' || $h->{driver} eq 'postres') blah blah

So, Martin, would you be interested in starting a little side-project
to propose an extension to the DBI spec for get_info()?

It's likely that DBIT will feed into that work, but there's clearly a
need beyond DBIT and you've clearly got (painful) experience to draw on :)

I suggest drawing up a list of things you'd like get_info to provide
info about (as you did informally in a recent email) then compare that
list with the those provided by the ANSI/ODBC standard to see which are
already covered.

Somewhat independant of that, I'd like to identify a set of get_info
items that we recommend all drivers define.

Tim.