Re: [Bug-gnubg] Database interface

[Jon Kinsey]

Joern Thyssen wrote:

> On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 01:12:56PM +0100, Jon Kinsey wrote
>
> > I've just had a quick look at the new sql database code and have
> > managed to get it working under windows.  I've used the public domain
> > database engine sqlite, which implements a subset of SQL92.  The main
> > thing used that wasn't covered was schemas, so I've changed my code
> > here to not use "gnubg." in places.
>
> Maybe we should introduce a variable
> schema = "gnubg."
> and use it throughout database.py.

Or we could just remove it, is it helpful - after all I guess everything 
in the database is under the same schema?

> > I'm not sure about using python to access the database.  It wasn't a
> > problem as there is a pysqlite module, I just don't think it's
> > necessary.  To put it another way, it adds a dependency that isn't
> > strictly required.  I imagine the code could easily be changed so that
> > the database access is in the C layer and the python code changed to
> > use this.  Is there any other reason to use python for this?
>
> Python has a documented DB API, so the changes should be relatively
> small from database to database. It's almost trivial to add support for
> a new database, in the sense that it doesn't require changes to the C
> code (e.g., new builds). The current code support all databases which
> has a Python DB API v2 just by doing simple changes to the python code.

You're right, in that I've hardly changed database.py to use a different 
database.  I'm not sure how many users are likely to do this though!

Perhaps this gets to the point I was trying to make - how do we see this 
being used?  I doubt many users are database experts, this is what I 
think is more likely:

Ordinary user:
* Minimal initial configuration of a database
* Use gnubg to store matches in database and retrieve basic statistics
* Possibly use python to run (supplied) scripts to gather other data 
from database

Power user:
* Use python to write scripts to gather more specialized data from database
* Possibly query database directly

For windows users (who invariable won't have a database on their 
machine), I would imagine supplying sqlite and not even telling them 
that it's there would be the best policy.
They then wouldn't necessarily have to install python.

Jon