[Gusdev-gusdev] NEW FUNCTIONALITY for Perl Object Layer

[steve f. <sfi...@pc...>]

folks-

With some suggestions from Brian, Dave and I have embarked on coding a 
new feature in the Perl Object Layer (which Dave will presumably include 
in the Java layer).  We will be able to add children or parents based on 
the name of the attribute in the child which holds the foreign key.  In 
other words, the object layer will fully support parents (children) 
having more than one kind of relationship to a particular child (parent) 
table.  

An existing example of this is:  
   BLATAlignment is the child of NASequenceImp with the two attributes: 
target_na_sequence_id and its query_na_sequence_id.

We will maintain backward compatibility (but will be doing away with the 
modelSpecialCases file).

An example of the functionality is:
$obj->setChild($child);           # old style, still supported
$obj->setChild($child, "AttributeName")    # the child is set using 
AttributeName.  only nec. if more than one relationship with the child 
table exists.

In the example of BLATAlignment:
   $BLATalign->setParent($naseq)      # will cause an error because this 
relationship needs the attribute name to disambiguate.
   $BLATalign->setParent($naseq, "QueryNaSequence");



The stategic question we NEED YOUR FEEDBACK ON is when should we merge 
this change into the main codebase?

We would like to do it as soon as we can (the longer we wait, the harder 
will be our code merge), but without putting at risk projects that have 
critical deadlines.

We know that the RAD folks may need this, and LoadGOOntology.

steve