[ic] Managing Database Structure Changes
Stefan Hornburg (Racke)
racke at linuxia.de
Mon Jun 1 18:16:42 UTC 2009
Marty Tennison wrote:
> Stefan Hornburg (Racke) wrote:
>> Hello, Interchange enthusiasts!
>>
>> [snip cool_stuff=1]
> Well, I'll give my 2 cents from the perspective of a amateur perl hacker. :)
>
> I read the README in the wellwell catalog and I must say, it all looks
> great. I would agree with all the goals. My observations are...
>
> The idea of using XML to store DB definitions is good IMO. This is very
> similar to what Magento does (http://www.magentocommerce.com/) which I
> admire a lot, except for the PHP part of course. :) In Magento they
> actually use XML to store page structure also (they call them blocks)
> and it's pretty slick once you get the hang of it. It adds a level of
> complexity to the design but it also creates a lot of possibilities.
>
> I think it would be good to consider scenarios where all catalogs share
> the same home directory and only differ by CSS or catalog specific files
> which can be searched by order of preference. I think a lot of the
> popularity of many of the CMS systems and even ecommerce systems like
> Magento is that you can operate two (or more) completely different sites
> but they share the same underlying code except for cosmetic
> differences. I've done this using interchange through the use of
> TemplateDir and it works well. I did not see any ability in the
> wellwell catalog.cfg for this functionality. Forgive me if I missed
> it. I'll be happy to share my catalog.cfg if needed as an example of
> how I achieved it.
OK, that is definitely a good idea. I didn't think of it yet, so wellwell
catalog.cfg doesn't support it.
Please share your catalog.cfg.
>
> I love the idea of plugins, especially if novice or intermediate hackers
> like myself can handle the API. I'll talk only from my personal
> experience but when I was evaluating other ecommerce systems I noticed
> that witting a plugin was fairly easy. In fact, I was even able to
> write (and contribute back) a plugin for Virtuemart (an ecommerce plugin
> for Joomla) in PHP no less? I noticed that if the plugin or feature API
> is easily accessible, it makes it possible for guys like me to get in a
> lot of trouble. :) But it sometimes turns into something good. Simple
> things like best sellers list, new items etc... are perfect projects for
> guys like me.
Definitely. Plugins will be like little catalogs in it itself, so I suppose
they will fairly easy to rewrite.
FYI: I just added a section "Authoring Plugins" to the README.
>
> Overall I really like the idea of "leaving no stone unturned". And from
> what I have seen by examining the wellwell catalog I think it looks more
> manageable and clean. It looks like the database scheme is being
> reworked, that's a VERY good thing.
Yes and I also envision some kind of catalog bootstrapping in the future,
so the user has just to add some details like database parameters and
server name for catalog setup.
>
> Overall, I dig it.
>
> Interchange ROCKS!!!! :) (group hug)
>
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Regards
Racke
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