[geeklog-devel] Is this rocking the boat?

[Tony Bibbs]

Ok, I think I sent this link here, but the more I read what I see, the 
more I like it.  Please take some time to read about Propel:

http://propel.phpdb.org

And read the user guide:

http://propel.phpdb.org/docs/user_guide/

The long and short of it is this.  We could implement Data Acces Objects 
that our code uses to interact with the database.  DAO is a good idea no 
matter what DB abstraction layer we use and regardless if we use a tool 
like Propel.  Essentially it hides the data access specifics from the 
developers.  Instead developers will call simple methods on the data 
access objects and let the DAO layer do the grunt work.

We could essentially use DAO to wrap the use of Propel for data acess.

That said there are some pros and cons:

Pros:
1) Clean API, developers no longer have to write SQL except in really 
rare instances.
2) Object oriented...right in line with GL2
3) Database changes are easier, now developers don't have to find all 
SQL effected by a database change.  We simply change things at the 
Propel level (wrapped by DAO), modify our HTML templates and we are off 
to the race.

Cons:
1) It is conceptionally more complicated.  Requires some ramp up.
2) Uses it's own DB abstraction layer (i.e. you can't use PEAR::DB even 
if you wanted to).
3) It's in Beta.

I think this tool could really save a ton of time.  Please give this a 
gander and try using it against a very simply table and let me know your 
thoughts.

--Tony