NAME¶
Alzabo - A data modelling tool and RDBMS-OO mapper
SYNOPSIS¶
Cannot be summarized here.
DESCRIPTION¶
What is Alzabo?¶
Alzabo is a suite of modules with two core functions. Its first use is as a data
modelling tool. Through either a schema creation GUI, a perl program, or
reverse engineering, you can create a set objects to represent a schema.
Its second function is as an RDBMS to object mapping system. Once you have
created a schema, you can use the "Alzabo::Runtime::Table" and
"Alzabo::Runtime::Row" classes to access its data. These classes
offer a high level interface to common operations such as SQL
"SELECT", "INSERT", "DELETE", and
"UPDATE" commands.
Because you can manipulate construct queries through object-oriented Perl,
creating complex queries on the fly is much easier than it would be if you had
to dynamically construct strings of SQL.
A higher level interface can be created through the use of the
"Alzabo::MethodMaker" module. This module takes a schema object and
auto-generates useful methods based on the tables, columns, and relationships
it finds in the module. The code is generates can be integrated with your own
code quite easily.
To take it a step further, you could then aggregate a set of rows from different
tables into a larger container object which could understand the logical
relationship between these tables.
What to Read?¶
Alzabo has a lot of documentation. If you are primarily interested in using
Alzabo as an RDBMS-OO wrapper, much of the documentation can be skipped. This
assumes that you will create your schema via a schema creation GUI or via
reverse engineering.
Here is the suggested reading order:
Introduction to Alzabo
The RDBMS-specific documentation:
Alzabo and MySQL
Alzabo and PostgreSQL
The Alzabo::Runtime::Schema docs - The most important parts here are those
related to loading a schema and connecting to a database. Also be sure to read
about the "join()" method.
The Alzabo::Runtime::Table docs - This contains most of the methods used to
fetch rows from the database, as well as the "insert()" method.
The Alzabo::Runtime::Row docs - The row objects contain the methods used to
update, delete, and retrieve data from the database.
The Alzabo::Runtime::RowCursor docs - A cursor object that returns only a single
row.
The Alzabo::Runtime::JoinCursor docs - A cursor object that returns multiple
rows at once.
The Alzabo::MethodMaker docs - One of the most useful parts of Alzabo. This
module can be used to auto-generate methods based on the structure of your
schema.
The Alzabo::Runtime::UniqueRowCache docs - This describes the simple caching
system included with Alzabo.
The Alzabo::Debug docs - How to turn on various kinds of debugging output.
The Alzabo::Exceptions docs - Describes the nature of all the exceptions used in
Alzabo.
The FAQ.
The quick reference - A quick reference for the various methods of the Alzabo
objects.
SCRIPTS¶
Alzabo comes with a few handy scripts in the
eg/ directory of the
distribution. These are:
- •
- alzabo_grep
Given a regex and a schema name, this script will print out the table and
column name for all columns which match the regex.
- •
- alzabo_to_ascii
Given a schema name, this script will generate a set of simple ASCII tables
for the schema.
SUPPORT¶
The Alzabo docs are conveniently located online at
http://www.alzabo.org/docs/.
There is also a mailing list. You can sign up at
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alzabo-general.
Please don't email me directly. Use the list instead so others can see your
questions.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (c) 2000-2003 David Rolsky. All rights reserved. This program is free
software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this
module.
AUTHOR¶
Dave Rolsky, <autarch@urth.org>