Re: Method for accessing SQL databases

[Magnus Bergman <magnus bergman observer net>]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:53:24 +0100
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-01-26 at 17:00 +0100, Magnus Bergman wrote:
> > I'm about to write a Gnome-VFS module for accessing SQL databases
> > (primary MySQL and Oracle).
> >
> if you use libgda (http://www.gnome-db.org) you'll get access to those
> and more databases for free.

Yes, I know about it, and looking into it is already on my todo-list.
But thanks anyway.
 
> >  And I was wondering if there is some kind of
> > standard related to mapping a URL to an SQL query. And if I'm forced
to
> > hack something myself I would appreciate opinions from others.
> > 
> I've many times thought about doing a database: method for VFS, but I
> ended up not doing because it really makes no sense, to have a
database
> being accessed like a file system. The only thing I could come up to
was
> to have just database: be a special nautilus folder that would show
all
> database connections as folders, and when you visit them, show the
> tables in those databases.
> 
> But I guess it's better to have a nice program for accessing those
> databases than doing it via the file system.
> 
> Another idea would be to use an underlying database and offer it as a
> file system, showing it like a file system in nautilus, not like
> databases. Something like MS's WinFS. That would make sense, IMO, for
> which you don't need that complicated URI scheme, you just need to be
> able to access the files as any other file system, like
> database://photo.jpg.
> 
> What were your ideas?

What I need it for is to index text documents already stored in fields
in databases (doing so in the first place was not my idea, I just have
to deal with it). I have already written a Gnome-VFS plugin to the
(commercial) search engine I use. And the search engine requires that
each "document" can be identified with a single string, for example a
URL. So I thought it would be nifty to use Gnome-VFS for this since it
will also work with GStreamer, which I plan to use in the system later
on.

Something like WinFS would suit me fine if it works with how the
databases in question are designed. But how would the mapping from just
a name to a specific field work? And should I interpret "database" as
a suggestion for the name for of schema, or was just an example?