[plt-scheme] oracle driver for PLT?

Hi Sigrid,
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:20 AM, keydana at gmx.de <keydana at gmx.de> wrote:

> I have a question inspired by YC's creation of the dbi interface. Seeing
> that there are currently drivers for mysql, postgresql and sqlite, I've
> started wondering how feasible it would be to write a driver for Oracle, and
> whether there would be any interest in the PLT community in having this?
>

Glad to hear that you are interested in such an endeavor!

IMHO any work that fills out the PLT industrial infrastructure stack is
welcome as it can help draw in potential PLT developers that were deterred
because they have come to expect such stack to be available.  IMHO if
something exists in Perl's CPAN it should be considered.

That being said - an Oracle driver might or might not be "immediately"
useful to many people - for the obvious reason that Oracle costs a lot and
not as easy to obtain (you have access, apparently).

Going by the axiom of solving your own needs and scratch your own itch - if
you find a need for it and develop a solution, others who have the same
needs will find it.  So if you need the driver that should be all that
mattered.

The key to develop a driver is that you need to either know the
communication protocol + network development or the C driver + FFI.
 Network-based (native scheme) has the advantage that it is pure scheme and
it works with PLT's threads (FFI calls synchronize threads), SPGSQL is such
a driver.  But if you are building a driver for embedded database you might
have to go with FFI since there are no network involved.  So it depends on
the database first, then it depends on your knowledge and comfort level with
either network or FFI development.

So if you want to write such a driver, you'll have to acquire either the
network protocol or the C driver knowledge - this is the hardest part.   I
wrote the DBI stack to help simplify the other "grunt" work as much as
possible, so let me know when you are ready to tackle the protocol, and I'll
help you get going.

In the mean time - you can read my tutorial on how to extend DBI to help you
get an idea -
http://weblambda.blogspot.com/2009/09/bzlibdbd-file-filesystem-based-database.html

Cheers,
yc
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