[plt-scheme] Looking for suggestions on how to approach an issue

If it is on windows use a microsoft library (I forget its name, used to 
DAO) and bind to that.

David Storrs wrote:
> Sorry for the relatively uninformative subject line...couldn't think
> how to summarize this cleanly.
>
> Problem Description:
> We are writing a closed-source system to pull data from multiple data
> sources.  Those sources might be RDBMSes, flat files, Excel files,
> whatever we eventually write an interface to.  This will be used in an
> MVC web framework built on the PLT web server.  (I'm aware of the DBI
> / DBD collection, but we opted not to use it as SQL isn't really the
> language of choice for talking to non-DB datasources.)
>
> Requirements:
> All knowledge of how to connect, how to do the read / write calls,
> etc, should be encapsulated within the model.  The model should expose
> a generic interface that the controller can use to read / write data
> to whatever source.  Our original thought was to do a polymorphic OO
> system.
>
>
> All fine and good; we've been making good progress on that.
>
>
> Problem:
> Now that we have a working prototype, we would like to add contracts
> to guarantee the correctness of data passed into and out of our
> read-data and write-data routines.  But contracts only apply across
> module boundaries.  Since the call to 'new' is within the module where
> the read / write calls are made, we don't see how to make this work.
>
> We're starting to think that OO may have been the wrong approach, and
> are considering reworking the prototype.  No sacred cows--we're
> looking to optimize for programmer time.  I asked in the IRC channel
> and got two useful pointers:  typed scheme or contract regions, but it
> was also suggested to ask on list, so I'm asking.
>
>
> Any thoughts?  Anyone have experience doing anything like this?
>
>
> --Dks
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