Re: [Refdb-devel] Once more the ruby bindings

[Sebastian H. <seb...@ii...>]

Markus Hoenicka wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sebastian Hoehn writes:
>  > I have an account on sourceforge: yhirmikq
>  > 
>
> I should have asked in the first place: would you prefer to develop
> your stuff as a part of the RefDB project, or would you like to start
> an independent SourceForge project? Either way is fine with me, just let
> me know.
>   
It is a good idea to start a new project, so that I can do some
additional stuff ;-)

I currently update the existing ruby bindings. That is fine and I hope
will be finished soon.
Furthermore I currently think about a SOAP bindings implemented in Ruby
to access the refdb database. This will deliver a standards compliant
interface to the server and deserve as a good starting point for future
interfaces.

Furthermore the ruby on rails webapp will be part of the new project. I
am still thinking about accessing the database directly from the webapp.
What is the pros and cons of additionally involving the current c-client
and server? The same is true for the possible implementation of the soap
bindings. Are there any advantages of additionally involving that
server? No matter, the current client and server are great and really
appreciate the emacs interface, but I wish to establish a central ref
database here at work and not everybody will be satisfied with that
interface. So the question is: should the webapp for managing the
references work directly with the database or is it better to interact
with the current server?

For two reasons I am in favor of the "direct approach" for the web app:

- We reduce the number of bugs, there are just the webapp and
mysql/pgsql/sqlite bugs, no server bugs
- We enhance performance, since all the queries can be executed directly

There certainly is a disadvantage, too:
- There is no support for ris, risx, bibtex and so on.

I see the disadvantage not too bad, because the code exists and can be
integrated in the project as is.

I am glad to hear your opinion on the topic.

The new project I will register with sourceforge will be called refdbonrails


> My test script runs ok, including adding, retrieving, and deleting
> notes. Would you mind sharing some more information about this
> problem? What do the notes look like? What queries do you run? What is
> the context in the log file (i.e. starting from the getnote command)?
>   
These are among the issues I dislike with the current server. The
communication is rather complicated and these errors cannot be
reproduced. I currently have two refdb servers running for testing the
ruby bindings and if one fails, the other works ;-)
>  > 
>  > I am currently rewriting and updating the bindings, they are rather out
>  > of date :-(
>  > 
>
> Yes, this is very likely. Diwaker mentioned that his code was lying
> around for half a year before he donated it, and that's also a while
> ago. Hope it's not too much hassle to update the stuff.
>   
It is alright, because I have the great perl module and I can stick with
that if the protocols of Diwaker are out of date. The code snippets
Diwaker provided are working great. So this is just a resembling of the
current sources.

Regards,

Sebastian