[ANNOUNCE] SPOPSx::Ginsu (inheritance for SPOPS)

From: Ray Zimmerman (rz10_at_cornell.edu)
Date: 04/24/04 

Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 10:52:11 -0400

The uploaded file

    SPOPSx-Ginsu-0.57.tar.gz

has entered CPAN as

  file: $CPAN/authors/id/Z/ZM/ZMAN/SPOPSx-Ginsu-0.57.tar.gz
  size: 66975 bytes
   md5: 7b6f18bc0d1f8a7ecb8612c909d61632

SPOPSx::Ginsu (which began its life as ESPOPS) stands for SPOPS
eXtension for Generalized INheritance SUpport. It is a Perl object
oriented persistence tool. To put it in the context of the other tools
summarized at (http://poop.sourceforge.net/) it essentially adds some of
Tangram's functionality to SPOPS.

SPOPS::DBI implements an inherited persistence mechanism for classes
whose objects are each stored as a row in a single database table. Each
class has its own table and all of the persistent fields are stored in
that table. Ginsu extends this implementation to handle subclassing of
such objects, including polymorphic retrieval. The fields of a given
object are stored across several database tables, one for each parent
class with persistent fields. A Ginsu object is simply an SPOPS::DBI
object stored across multiple database tables.

Ginsu and SPOPS also differ in the usage style. With standard SPOPS,
classes are typically created at runtime from configuration files and
any code for the classes is imported from a separate code class. With
Ginsu, each class looks like a standard Perl class, with its own .pm
file containing the class's code. The BEGIN block includes variables
containing the SPOPS configuration data for the class. To use a Ginsu
class, you simply 'use' it as you would any other Perl class.

Currently, Ginsu has only been tested with MySQL, since that's what we
use. It should be fairly easy to make it work with any database SPOPS
supports, but that has not become a priority for my own use.

Any help with any of the following development tasks is appreciated.
 - making Ginsu database independent
 - fixing some of the SPOPS functionality that we've broken or ignored in
   Ginsu (security, lazy loading, database independence, strict fields)
 - integrating Ginsu functionality into the SPOPS core
 - implementing the enhanced object relationship configuration 

--
Ray Zimmerman
Director, Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Decision Research
428-B Phillips Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
phone:  (607) 255-9645       fax: (815) 377-3932