[support] Modules and Postgres

[Larry Garfield]

On Thursday 04 October 2007, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:

> I don't know. I should look at the module.
>
> Drupal modules with postgres mostly work. Sometimes you've to tweak
> the sql by yourself. Major annoyance is keeping up with new module
> versions, security and such.
>
> Submitting patch back wasn't so successful. I think because I
> completely ignore to provide 2 DB layers and just tweaked the SQL
> statement inside the DB so it could work with pgsql *and* mysql.
>
> I had the impression anyway that very few modules provide separate DB
> layers and have most of the SQL statement hard coded.
>
> At this time I just needed to fix a couple of modules in a very
> simple way. It was too much of a work to rewrite the module to
> actually provide 2 DB layers and submit it back to the maintainer
> with higher chances to see it included compared to fix the module
> everytime.

In 99.5% of cases, a module should not be writing anything database-specific 
in its queries.  The only place it should care about the database type at all 
is in the install hook, where it has to switch on the database type.  The SQL 
in the module should be DB-agnostic.

Not all module authors provide or even care about the necessary create table 
statements for Postgres, however.  That's not malice.  That's simply because 
most module authors know MySQL, have MySQL, and can test MySQL.  They neither 
know, use, nor can test on PostgreSQL.  I know many of my modules don't have 
any worthwhile support for or testing on PostgreSQL, because I never use 
PostgreSQL and so would have no way to say if the code I'm writing actually 
works.  

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

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