Sender: goran
Message-ID: <35D03793.B05CD6AF@bildbasen.se>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 14:22:43 +0200
From: Goran Thyni <goran@bildbasen.se>
Organization: JMS Bildbasen i Kiruna AB
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Edmund Mergl <E.Mergl@bawue.de>
CC: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] Re: thread-safe libpq and DBD::Pg
References: <4535.902703096@sss.pgh.pa.us> <35CE9F16.CECD5F6C@bildbasen.se>
	<35CF2375.D107365@bawue.de>
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Edmund,

I certainly respect your opinions and take note. We have used your
DBD::Pg-module
in several projects here with great success.

This is the conclusions I have reach:

* A "pure perl"-interface is useful for
	- systems without decent C-compiler
	- systems not supported by libpq 
          (there is already a pure TCL interface, isn't it?)
	- in other special applications where "pure perl" is preferable. 
* I will release my module, probably called PgSQL since,
	- I need a "pure perl" interface for a couple of project
	- The basic module is mostly done already
	- Why not share?
* I will *NOT* make a DBD interface, because
	- I don't need it
	- the C-code in DBI make the arguments for "pure perl" mute 
	- It would confuse J. Random Looser and friends :-)

As I see it there is a niche for all three perl interfaces:
* DBI/DBD::Pg: 
	excellent portability across RDBMSs and nice standard API
	makes it the natural choise for most project.
* Pg:
	the choice where low-level access and maximum performance is needed
* PgSQL: 
	"pure perl" with OO-design makes it easily customizable for
	PostgreSQL-only applications.

Maybe I will look at thread-safety for DBI/DBD::Pg/libpq but
debugging C-based perl-modules is pretty time consuming
(I wrote the DBD::Informix4 module a couple of yeasr ago).
Combine that with threads/debugging headache and isn't
so funny anymore. :-)

	regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------------
Göran Thyni, sysadm, JMS Bildbasen, Kiruna


---------------------------------------------------------------

Edmund Mergl wrote:
> I suggest to spend the effort on making libpq thread safe.
> Otherwise we end up with two DBD modules for postgres.
> If you prepare a module, which does not depend on libpq,
> you will have much more effort on keeping it up to date.
> The main goal of an interface like libpq is to avoid such
> dependencies.