Re: [Gnumed-devel] proposal for dbapi base class

[Horst Herb]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003 01:22, address@hidden wrote:
> do i smell an object-relational-mapper here,
> or is it an object-relational-mapping ?

It is a mapper. Have a look at gmPgObject.py The class "pgobject" analyzes 
table metadata, all it needs to know in the constructor is the table name and 
the service where the table is found. Then, the object sniffs out the meta 
data in a lazy way (and caches whatever it found). With the help of the 
metadata, the object recognizes table relationships and constructs related 
objects automatically (again, "lazy" = on demand only)

The dbapi I propose would wrap around this wrapper and abstract further, away 
from a "table hierarchy" paradigm to a "concept tree" paradigm

Horst

> means a generic mapper or handcrafted mappings ?

Generic in pgobject, but neccessarily handcrafted (to a minor degree) in the 
outermost wrapping since the semantics of a concept (like "a patient")  
cannot always be derived automatically from table metadata

Horst