[Bioperl-l] bioperl-db and postgres8.3 - status query

[Scott Cain]

Hi Chris,

GMOD still only supports Chado with Postgres (for example, the GFF
loader assumes a Postgres database), but when I reengineered the GFF
loader a few years ago, I tried to do it with subclassing the loader
in mind so that it could be subclassed to work with other RDMS.

Scott


On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Chris Fields <cjfields at illinois.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 10:59 -0500, Siddhartha Basu wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Robert Buels wrote:
>>
>> > Chris Fields wrote:
>> > > I think it's worth exploring having a DBIx::Class-based middle-ware
>> > > approach similar to what Rob Buels has done for Chado.  That would be
>> > > fairly easy to get started using DBIx::Class::Schema::Loader.
>> > > After that it would require optimization and tweaking, which is
>> > > potentially more complex than Rob's setup as Chado is very Pg-specific,
>> > > but maybe Rob can elaborate...
>> >
>> > Elaborating on how Bio::Chado::Schema is developed:
>> >
>> > The vast majority of the code and POD in BCS is autogenerated by
>> > DBIx::Class::Schema::Loader.  DBICSL gives you a baseline set of
>> > DBIx::Class classes that covers all the tables, views, columns, unique
>> > constraints, and foreign key relationships.
>> >
>> > Beyond that, you have to add on yourself.  In BCS, we have mostly done
>> > things like:
>> >
>> >   * make better-named aliases for some of the autogenerated
>> >     relationships (though DBICSL does a surprisingly good job of naming
>> >     relationships automatically most of the time)
>> >   * add a tiny bit of bioperl compatibility (this needs a lot more work
>> >     by somebody, volunteers needed!)
>> >   * add convenience methods for using some of the Chado property tables
>> >   * use DBIx::Class::Tree::NestedSet to add some powerful ways of
>> >     traversing phylogenetic tree relationships
>> >
>> > Regarding DB backend specificity, BCS isn't Pg-specific at all, because
>> > DBIx::Class itself goes to great lengths to be compatible (and performant!)
>> > with just about every relational database out there.
>> I would vouch for that at least as far as chado in oracle is concerned.
>> So,  far BCS works out flawlessly with our oracle chado instance at
>> dictybase. Quite a chunk of BCS based code is also active in couple of
>> our Mojo based webapps. The part which i still couldn't use directly is
>> the 'synonym' table as it clashes with oracle specific reserved keywords.
>> However,  overall it seems to quite cross-RDMS compatible and highly
>> recommended.
>>
>> -siddhartha
>
> Just to point out, I didn't say BCS is Pg-specific, but that Chado is
> (that was the DBMS it was designed for).  Maybe that should be amended
> to 'was' now :)
>
> I recall seeing a page on this somewhere on the GMOD website along the
> lines of "MySQL has problems so we chose Pg", and that Chado support
> would focus on Pg.  I'm guessing that's no longer the case?  Or is only
> the server-side stuff Pg-specific.
>
>> >In fact, the BCS test
>> > suite deploys a Chado schema into a temporary SQLite database using
>> > DBIC::Schema's deploy() method, and runs all of its tests on that.  Very
>> > handy.
>> >
>> > Chado's Pg-specific server-side functions can of course be called through
>> > BCS if they are present, but it's perfectly possible to use Chado without
>> > any of the server-side functions, and mostly the way I use it.
>> >
>> > Rob
>
> I think this opens up the possibility of starting a DBIx::Class-based
> middleware solution.  Hilmar, did you want to take that on?
>
> chris
>
>
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Cain, Ph. D.                                   scott at scottcain dot net
GMOD Coordinator (http://gmod.org/)                     216-392-3087
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research