Re: [Phpslash-devel] M8 Goals, Release Criteria and TODO

[Matthew L. <lei...@ma...>]

Hi Joe,

This is the fun part; the "daydreaming" part of programming.

On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 11:01, Joe Stewart wrote:
> I started a M8 Group for Feature Requests.  If you have any features that
> are needed or wanted for release please add them or make a note of the
> existing RFE.
[snip.  Will respond to the other topics in their e-mails]
 
>  pushed back from 0.7 -
>  DB Abstraction to allow any db to be used.
> 
>  [Expected Release: 3 - 4 months after 0.7] 
> 
>  I want to give users the ability to have their own mini stories and crap
>  on their user page. This will highly rock and be really helpful in
>  forming a "community" feeling about the site. 
>  User Stories will incur a lot of load so we'll need to make sure all the
>  SQL and logic are tight and fast. 
>  The plug-in API should allow other app writers to be able to easily
>  communicate with phpSlash to share data across the website (ie: phorum,
>  IMP)
>   
>   Localization / Language / Internationization Support
> 
> 
> 
> 'DB Abstraction to allow any db to be used'. - How high is this on your
> list?  I'd like to have postgres support but don't feel capable of the sql
> portions.  To get the issues defined, I've thought of adding a small
> translation layer like pslgetText for problematic queries only.  Then
> while we maybe restructure the query to be standard sql, support for
> postgres would still be available.

This seems like it would be an easy job until you try to do it.  I don't
know for sure but I think the SQL flavors are different enough that
translation is hard.  Add to that the fact that the queries are built up
dynamically and I don't know when the translation is supposed to happen.

One possibility is a query class with methods like add_field and
add_condition and which wouldn't write out an SQL string until the query
is ready to go.  Then you could have different implementations of the
query class for different SQL flavors.  But that seems like a lot of
overhead.

Or you could template SQL queries...?

> 'I want to give users the ability to have their own mini stories and crap
> on their user page. This will highly rock and be really helpful in
> forming a "community" feeling about the site'. - Is this the same as user
> blogs?  I think we are very close with the existing structure.  The user
> group just needs permission to create stories for a "userblog" type
> section.  Their pages show using their author_id as an argument.

Yep. 

> 'User Stories will incur a lot of load so we'll need to make sure all the
>  SQL and logic are tight and fast.' - Anyone got anything specific here.
>  Bryce sent me a note that something in the polls need indexing.  I'll try
>  to find my note to remember this one.

I heard a guy at PHPCon say "Somebody told me, 'PHP sucks!  I wrote this
script to present data from a database, and it's monstrously slow!'  I
showed him how an index would make his database return more quickly, and
the script ran a lot better.  He said, 'Wow!  PHP's cool!'"

> 'The plug-in API should allow other app writers to be able to easily
>  communicate with phpSlash to share data across the website (ie: phorum,
>   IMP)' - ?

Some integration on the DB side would be possible if MySQL only
supported views or triggers... :-(

I think XMLRPC/SOAP is a step in this direction.  But that's a huge
project and maybe better for M9.  

> 'Localization / Language / Internationization Support' - Isn't this
> largely done except now with split modules there is some decision making
> needed.

I think the best thing is to put all module-specific things inside the
module's directory.  Otherwise it's not very modular!

PHPGW has a directory structure like this.  I can't remember what it was
and I'm having trouble reaching their site.  (Maybe that's a reason not
to follow their lead, but I'm sure it's other problems).
	
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-- 
Matthew Leingang
Harvard University Department of Mathematics
lei...@ma...