Re: Joining the PDBI project

Jeremy Brinkley wrote:
> I'll post, if only to prove there are more than three subscribers to the
> list. :)

Hello.

> On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 04:18:54AM -0800, Darren Duncan wrote:
> 
> The NCI should allow most libraries to be loaded and called into without
> wrapping with C glue; but some, depending on their quirkiness, may require
> a wrapper in C.

I am hoping that we can avoid going out to using C if possible. The NCI 
is very good and there is still a lot of work to be done on it.

>>But if they are entirely PASM or IMCC, then what features does Parrot
>>provide that would magically talk to the native C libraries for each
>>database product?
> 
> 
> The underlying platform's dynamic loading mechanism. Check out
> docs/pdds/pdd16_native_call.pod.

This is one area the Parrot guys are looking at. We should eventually 
have "runtime loading".

> I'll comment that for my money merely having DBI-style functionality
> available for other languages is enormously worth it, I'd argue the
> successful design of the DBI argues against changing its core features.
> OTOH extensibility is a good thing, so perhaps providing easy ways to
> extend the DBI is the way to go.

I would be pleasantly suprised to see a better design. It is a very 
mature product and as you say its success is a good indication that it 
must be doing something right ;-)

I would very much doubt that users will see a radical new DBI, besides, 
we are meant to be discussing the Parrot Database Interface PDBI layer 
which I doubt users are going to see at all. The DBI layer that will be 
written for each language is a long way off.

What we might see if we get the PDBI layer working well is languages 
having more frontend modules or libs that use the PDBI

> Chair of Quantum Non-binary Accumulators
> Louden Nelson Memorial Tea Club of Santa Cruz

???? ;-)

Harry