[Bioperl-l] UCSC database backend

[Sean Davis]

I have put together a variation of the database backend.  It is based on
DBIx::Abstract and exposes a bit more of the SQL and DBI.  Since UCSC uses
cross-database queries, it might be a better fit for the problem than an
ORM.  It is pretty simple, but I don't know that we need much more here.
The harder problem, as I mentioned earlier, is to determine what to return,
not how to return it.  I am showing only a couple of the DBIx::Abstract
methods here; there are a number of others for fetching data.  In
particular, pretty much any of the fetch_* are available.

Here is the basic POD:



NAME
       Bio::DB::UCSC::DB - database abstraction for UCSC

SYNOPSIS
          use Bio::DB::UCSC::DB;

          # By default, connect to MySQL server at UCSC, hg18 database
          my $db =  Bio::DB::UCSC::DB->new();

          if ($db->select('*','refGene')->rows) {
              while (my $data = $db->fetchrow_hashref) {
                  ....
              }
          }

          #get table database descriptions from hgcentral database
          my $db_descriptions = $db->db_descriptions(); #arrayref of
hashrefs

          #get full listing of tables (and attributes)
          my $dbi_table_info = $db->dbi_table_info(); #arrayref of hashrefs

          #get full column information for the "tissue" table
          my $dbi_column_info = $db->dbi_column_info('tissue'); #arrayref of
hashrefs

          #get table descriptions from UCSC tableDescriptions table
          #Still needs a bit of cleanup, but....
          my $table_descriptions = $db->table_descriptions(); #arrayref of
hashrefs

DESCRIPTION
       This module provides some database abstraction via DBIx::Abstract.
The
       connection parameters are currently passed directly to
       DBIx::Abstract->connect().  All the methods of DBIx::Abstract are
       available, with the addition of a ->dbh() method to get at the DBI
       database handle and the database introspection methods noted above.

TODO
       A fair bit of work on the connection end.  In particular, I will
proba-
       bly make a "Bio::DB::SQL" class that encapsulates some methods for
       working with SQL databases and some kind of abstraction for
connection
       information, making it easier to switch from local to remote versions
       of a database.

See Also
           L<DBIx::Abstract>,L<DBI>

Author
       Sean Davis <sdavis2 at mail.nih.gov>