[development] Advice Needed

[Walt Daniels]

Ok, where is a sample of your fifteen-lines PHP function.  

-----Original Message-----
From: development-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:development-bounces at drupal.org]
On Behalf Of Bèr Kessels
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 3:55 PM
To: development at drupal.org
Subject: Re: [development] Advice Needed

Op dinsdag 28 augustus 2007, schreef Farsheed:
>  The advantage
> being you get all the views query goodness and all you have to do is 
> make sure the data is output the way you want.

The disavantage should also be mentioned here: Complexity. 

A views style plugin is actually (ahum) an abstraction layer, on an
abstraction layer, on an abstraction layer and so forth, approximately six
levels deep. 
Drupal, has a DBA to talk to SQL. Views lays on top of that as some kind of
databasequery builder, adding complexity to an already complex thing. On top
of that lies the Drupal theme layer. But, views style lies on top if /that/
altering the theme. In fact, views has a theme abstraction in itself too.
And on top of that, you get the theme layer again. 

Disclaimer: I am in favour of a simple fifteen-lines PHP function to
aggregate data from the DB and present that in the table the way the client
wants to see it, over views, cck, theme-over-theme-over-abstraction layers
and all that. I just put this other side of the medallion here, so that
readers are not blinded by all the CCK/views goodness, but can value a
simple few lines of PHP where appropriate :)

Bèr
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