[DB-SIG] Experiences with DB-API2.0

[Tom Jenkins]

On Fri, 2002-06-21 at 04:35, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> Dustin Sallings wrote:
> 
> 
> > 	I'm not saying the DB API is the wrong direction, it's certainly
> > helping, but it needs to get rid of ambiguities and fill in some blanks.
> > Any place where there's room for the developer to make decisions that
> > affect the way the API is used makes it difficult to write code against
> > the API.  Options are only good if they're all required (i.e. the five
> > quoting techniques).  That is to say, options for the user of the driver,
> > not for the developer of the driver.
> 
> I disagree.
> 
> The freedom is needed so that you can support
> more than just one backend, e.g. a flat file database is likely
> to behave differently than a full blown SQL Server.

>From a driver developer's point of view, but not from an application
developer's point of view.


> > 	So, yeah, there are lots of drivers, but you have to learn how to
> > use each one at least slightly differently.  As long as this occurs, and
> > as long as people have to change code when switching drivers, the API is
> > insufficient.
> 
> Maybe for you, but not for the majority. The DB API has a very
> long success story. This is evidence enough for me that the
> approach was the right one.

I submit that version 1 is better than version 2.  I also submit that
version 2 is not the end-all, be-all.  


> 
> Again, if you don't like dealing with multiple different
> interface use mxODBC and talk to the database via ODBC.
> 

This would lock myself and my clients into a single commercial vendor
solution.  That is unacceptable.

-- 

Tom Jenkins
Development InfoStructure
http://www.devis.com