[development] Advanced DB features was: RFC: drupal as a moving target

[Joshua D. Drake]

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:06:24 +0200
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo <mail at webthatworks.it> wrote:
 
> Interesting. I'm doing the same but I haven't touched core to avoid a
> further burden in maintenance if I've to keep up with security
> updates.

Well we try to stay out of that as well if we can but sometimes you
just can't (like using Tsearch2).

> 
> I think it would be enlightening to see where you exploited more
> advanced DB functions. Even if I suppose you did with one DB in mind
> it would still be interesting to know which were the features and
> where you thought they really fit because D7 should support much more
> DB features.

Actually it should be fairly easy to do if the API is abstracted out
correctly. The things I see needing to be done (and I admit that I
haven't even looked at 7):

 * Abstract out page renders into custom calls.
   * So the node call checks to see if its predetermined (and thus
draws whatever is in the db to draw), like the front page.
   * Or, if a node load exists (terminology as you like) it would call
whatever you want.

Case in point, Drupal can easily execute 200 queries to draw a page.
Why do we do that? It's dumb and inefficient. You lose 30ms for every
single query just in TCP negotiation. You push that to 5 stored
procedures that draw blocks, and you have shaved ~ 5 seconds off your
load in just negotiation. Add a cached procedure and you could shave
another ~ 5 seconds off. 

> Even if I doubt support for stored procedures is going
> to find its way into Drupal since the core has to remain DB
> agnostic 

I doubt that is actually an issue. I understand that we have to dumb
things down for the dolphin but that doesn't mean the api can't be
smart about it.

If Catalyst can do it...

>and I think providing an abstraction layer to sp is hard some
> oversight may help to see which are the features that could be more
> relevant to support... I'm at least thinking to transactions.
> 

Ahh but it can. Remember that even the dolphin has stored procedures.

Joshua D. Drake


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