Re: [gnome-db] GdaColumn as a GObject

[Vivien Malerba <vmalerba gmail com>]

2005/9/22, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>:
> In libgda HEAD, GdaColumn was recently changed to be a GObject, instead
> of being a copyable boxed type (struct).
>
> This makes ownership a little less obvious. For instance, may we ever
> use the gda_column_set_*() methods on a GdaColumn that we get from
> gda_data_model_describe_column() before passing it to
> gda_data_model_append_column()? I guess not, because we are using the
> same instance.
>
> I guess we need to always create a new GdaColumn before using the set
> methods, but it seems worth asking/clarifying.
>
> If we could keep the copy function (removed when it was changed to a
> GObject), some things would be easier for me.

You're right about that problem, I had not seen it!

However it seems that method is not implemented by any of the
GdaDataModel* objects, so there are two possibilities there:
-> change the API to something like
GdaColumn *gda_data_model_append_column (GdaDataModel *model); or
-> remore that method completely.

I'd vote for the second solution because:
-> data models are like tables and the number of columns is known when
the object is created (like for the GtkListStore and GtkTreeStore
models)
-> obviously it has not been used much (otherwise people would have
noticed that it was not implemented) and it's always better to have
simple and concise API.

Tell me what you think and I'll do the changes before 2.0.

Thanks,

Vivien