[Websyntax-core] [FYI] Propel - object persistence for PHP5

[Hans L. <ha...@ve...>]

Hi Folks,

For the past sevaral months I've been developing Propel, a PHP5 port of
the Apache Torque object persistence layer. In many ways Propel (and
Torque) is quite similar to PxDB/Syntax, so it might be interesting to
look at.  http://propel.phpdb.org for the glossy view.

In short, the way Propel works is:

1) You define your data model in XML (a fairly simple schema)

2) You use Phing (PHP build tool, based on ANT) to "build" the object
model; this step creates classes for manipulating objects in the database
and SQL definition (dump) files to create the database in your specific
RDBMS.

3) You use the created classes in your scripts to search & manipulate rows
& tables in your database.  Every class has a Base class and an
[initially] empty subclass which is where custom behavior can go (i.e. you
use overrides in subclass to avoid needing to change the om templates for
custom behavior).

Some features:

+ Advanced support for inter-related objects.  Ability to fetch related
records within the same primary query
(BookPeer::doSelectJoinAuthor($criteria).  Also, cascading save & delete
is supported.
+ Support for inheritance
+ The DB structure is much more traditional than Syntax's: e.g. there's no
monster "records" table.
+ Similar to Syntax, a Criteria/Criterion system is used to construct
queries.  Propel's Criteria system is quite a bit more complex than
Syntax's, though, making it possible to do very complicated logical
combinations.

On the other hand, Propel is not a CMF; it's just an object persistence
layer.  There is no perms/privs support; there is no DBasis tool for
working with the XML.  Neither is there a "Context" tool to provide an
admin interface.  Things like this may come to exist in the future; the
team member who is writing the Oracle drivers is also working on
"Combine", a port of Turbine which provides a framework on top of Propel.

Obviously this servers a different need from PxDB/Syntax, but wanted to
let you know that the Propel tools are pretty nice for working with
traditional database designs in an object-oriented fashion.  Anyway, it's
been a fun project.  It was neat to see that PxDB stuff is quite good at
stuff like SearchCriteria objects for query construction, etc.

Cheers,
Hans