Re: [REQADM-Users-L] REQADM moved to SourceForge

[Tom I. H. <ti...@eu...>]

Steve Willoughby <st...@al...> writes:

> Yes, actually, I've already started writing a MySQL replacement for it.

Great!  :-)

> Not only should this speed up REQADM and make it easier to set up, but
> I'm considering ditching all the weird little support services and scripts
> which keep REQADM in sync with your organization's user list, and just
> document a couple of MySQL tables and say "Just do whatever you need to
> do to keep these tables up to date on your end, and REQADM will read them."

That seems like a very good idea.  Depending on local needs, they
could even be replaced by views that pull data from other databases.

> The actual database code will be in one source module, and that module
> (which I'm writing for MySQL) can be switched for another copy written 
> for Oracle, or one for Sybase, or whatever people want to do.

It occurs to me that being able to load more than one database driver
might be a good thing.  For instance, one could envisage keeping the
ticket system in one database, while accessing another one to fetch
existing information about users/customers/machines/whatever.  It
would mean keeping some cross references out of actual queries, as in
not JOINing ticket and user tables directly, but doing separate
queries that expect a user ID to mean the same user in both databases.
Not sure it's worth the complexity, though.

As soon as you have the API in place, I'd like to start writing a
PostgreSQL version of the database access module.  Accepting the
limitations of a primitive database system like MySQL won't go down
well around here...  :-)

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, Senior System Administrator, EUnet Norway
www.eunet.no  T: +47-22092958 M: +47-93013940 F: +47-22092901