[development] Extend database abstraction layer, to include table creation.

[Dries Buytaert]

On 12 May 2006, at 17:50, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
>> Hundreds of books have been written about PHP and MySQL.  As a  
>> newbie, you can buy these books and understand what Drupal's MySQL  
>> schemas mean.
>
> While that is true, most people don't buy these books. I think that  
> Adrian's proposed scheme isn't harder to learn from scratch than  
> the usual SQL queries. The only drawback is that when you learn  
> plain SQL you can use it elsewhere too while you can't do so with  
> Adrian's abstraction layer.

No.  If no one would buy these books, there wouldn't be as many  
available.

>> I'm not saying that the database definition function is a bad  
>> thing or that we should drop it on the floor.  We have to  
>> carefully evaluate whether the advantages (portability) outweight  
>> the drawbacks (less developers).
>
> Any developer worth the name should be easily able to understand  
> this scheme if he has prior knowledge of SQL. If he hasn't then it  
> doesn't matter (to us) if he learns plain SQL or our db abstraction  
> layer.

No.  If you believe that is true, then the following holds as well:  
"Any developer worth the name should be easily able to understand  
PostgreSQL if he has prior knowledge of (My)SQL".

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/