On 6/9/06, Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert@gmail.com> wrote:
On 09 Jun 2006, at 19:44, Adrian Rossouw wrote:
Adrian Roussow is working on something like this already.
I wish I was. But sadly Dries has (in no uncertain terms) said he didn't like the idea.
If the majority of the people think this is a good idea, I'd be happy to go with this direction.
As mentioned, I understand the advantages of said system, but I still prefer the transparency and simplicity of "raw" SQL statements.
SQL is an abstraction layer, and one that is documented in hundreds of books and articles. It is my opinion that creating a Drupal- specific abstraction layer on top of an existing, standards compliant abstraction layer used by hundreds of thousands of people creates an additional barrier for developers that are new to Drupal, but that are familiar to SQL.
I, for one, wouldn't want to learn an application specific SQL-like description language. As a developer, it would sorta turn me off, and make me shout 'bloat!'.
What about a simple helper script that sucked in .mysql files and generated it for you? You could then learn the app specific stuff if you wanted to do some of the special tricks or abilities that this enables. I agree that adding yet-another-special-Drupal thing adds complexity for new developers. But part of what makes Drupal interesting/powerful is some of our helper functions and abstraction layers. Reading Ken Rickard's description of how Drupal helped him learn good PHP is very interesting: http://ken.therickards.com/2006/06/04/tech-notes/ Clearly, this is one of those areas where some small group of folks will have to join forces and give this a shot to see if it makes sense, and then we can poke holes in running code. -- Boris Mann Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com