[SQLObject] Fw: SQLObject questions

[<Ben...@ri...>]

Hi,

First of all I'd like to say that I really like SQLObject. It appears to 
be just what I need for my project. 

What I have is a series of API classes that contain the functionality of 
the application. However they are meant to be repurposable to a large 
number of identical "zones". At the moment this is represented as 
different postresql databases and schemas, e.g the same API is used on 
multiple sets of data. This is to allow lots of "client" sites to co-exist 
within one web app (yes, another case of NIH, although I feel it's 
justified)

At the moment the code looks a bit like this:

class API(object):
        def __init__(self, zone):
                class DBObj(SQLObject):
                        _table = schema_from_zone(zone) + ".dbobj"
                        _conn = connection_from_zone(zone)

                self.DBObj = DBObj

Now this strikes me as a very inefficient was of doing things. I'm pretty 
sure construction of an SQLObject class is not trivial, and lots of these 
APIs are created.

I could do

class DBObj(SQLObject):
        ...

class API(object):
        def __init__(self, zone):
                DBObj._table = schema_from_zone(zone) + ".dbobj"
                DBObj._conn = connection_from_zone(zone)

But this again seems inelegant, and also not thread safe should I ever 
want to do that. 

Is there a nice way around this problem? An ideal solution would be to a 
clone method on the metaclass which allows each API instance to have its 
own objects, but they somehow share the definition.
I guess another way would be to have a class outside the API with the 
column definitions and then inherit inside the init function to add the 
table and connection, but would this be any faster?

Secondly I have another quick question. When you put in a ForeignKey 
column you actually get two properties: column and columnID. Can I rely on 
columnID existing into the future, as I want to use it for caching, but it 
appears to be undocumented at the moment.

Also I have a few utility functions which I have found to be useful when 
using SQLObject. Would you be at all interested in including them in the 
distribution?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Ben