[Openinteract-help] sub-classing SPOPS

[Steve S. <sap...@gs...>]

I brought this topic up a while ago here.  Chris gave me some
starting pointers which I sat on while I caught up on my "real"
work.  I recently had some time to get back to this.  Here's my
current dilemma:

We have a package that we use for data transforms that allows you
to configure a set of inputs/filters/outputs.  Basically you build
a map defining all the steps.  Once you have a map you can either
feed it to a translator, which runs the whole thing; or you can fetch
a row from an output node and do what you want with that row.  There
are no row level IDs used here -- if you're fetching, you just fetch
the next row until there are no more.  SPOPS, being more of a table
model, wants IDs for fetches.  Is there a way around this?  Looking at
what we have, it's really more suitable as a template level tool maybe;
i.e., just give it a wrapper and expand the data sets using TT constructs.
But I'd like to utilize the security layer SPOPS offers for data access.
And, since we do use this for canned data writes/updates, I want to keep
an eye on plugging this in more fully as a full data access layer.  In all
cases where I'd be using this now (read only), I'd be fetching the entire
set of data the translation defines, although I will want to be able to
segment larger sets so they can be paged.  Just using implicit sequence
numbers seems to fit.  It's not clear to me how far up the need for an
ID bubbles though ...  assigning my own would not give higher level users
any universally known key (like a user name, etc.).  What sort of usage
impact does that have within the entire OI framework?

Also, regarding the paging need, I'd want to not be required to load the
entire set in since some of these can be quite large.  Load as needed is
mostly the model I'd want.

-- 
Steve Sapovits    GSI Commerce, Inc.    http://www.gsicommerce.com
Email:   sap...@gs...