[sr-dev] version of s tables

Alex Balashov abalashov at evaristesys.com
Mon Jul 6 10:39:47 CEST 2009


Juha Heinanen wrote:
> Alex Balashov writes:
> 
>  > Most database APIs provide a way to expose the table definition as well, 
>  > i.e. a list of column types and names.
> 
> that is what mysql describe and show statements do, but analyzing the
> output is not convenient (columns, types, attributes, index).

No, what I meant is that the database interaction library itself (e.g. 
libmysqlclient) provide ways to get this information into native data 
primitives generically, which lends itself to more generic and simple 
machine processing.

In the case of PHP, to run with your example, it would be something like 
this:

   http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-field.php

This PHP function exposes a native underlying function in libmysqlclient 
that is sure to be accessible from the C API as well.  It does not 
simply parse the textual output of a DESCRIBE command.

No matter how compelling this direction, it is certainly more difficult 
than simply using 'version' numbers -- of that there is no question.

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
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