[BlueOnyx:11400] Re: Fund-raising for a modern BlueOnyx theme

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Tjerk,

> Good to see the layout is going to be renewed. I like it so I did a small
> donation and encourage everyone to do so.

Many thanks! Much appreciated.

> In terms of renewing.. would it be an idea to drop CODB when implementing
> the new design?
> CODB has a way of getting corrupt and its actual data is 'invisible' to most
> users. Why not use something like a separate MySQL local admin server to
> generate all the config files etc?
> It has advantages in backup, error detecting, inserting, editing data..
> I know it has nothing to do with the design but maybe when implementing the
> new design it is a good time to look at the other end too.

Yeah, we have discussed this on the developer's list. I'll quote parts
of what I said there:

---

Sure, CODB is a hog. It's basically an archaic database with single user
capability, is slow, ugly and prone to generate database artifacts which
are very difficult to repair. Greg and I talked about the possibility of
eventually replacing CODB with a MySQL database that supports the
"entity–attribute–value model" (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity–attribute–value_model).

While this would be awesome, the problem there would be that we'd need
to pull off some heavy duty C programming to hack a MySQL compatible
interface into CCE to provide a client- and server-interface so that
Sausalito can talk to the new MySQL database layer instead of using
CODB. But that is something that I can't code.

Most pre-made frameworks [we also talked about switching the GUI
entirely to a pre-made framework such as Zend, Yii or Kohana] already
have some kind of database backend. That may be SQLite, MySQL, Postgres,
or something else. And while that may be good for storing things in
general: We really need the "triggers" that CODB provides to fire off
handlers on certain database events as defined in our module config files.

I understand that this can also be done with MySQL to some degree. But
as said: It's like going back and starting the whole project off a blank
page with nothing but some enthusiasm and some weird ideas.

---

So let me say this in closing: Yes, in the long term it would be
beneficial if CODB was also replaced with something else. However, that
would a massive undertaking which is a bit beyond what we can do at the
moment. Let us take this one step at a time and during the first step
we'll see a much more modern GUI. That will also give us the chance to
dust off some of the core code of BlueOnyx and to streamline and
modernize it. CODB however will have to remain as it is for now.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber