Re: [INTERFACES] [pgaccess-users] RE: bugzilla.pgaccess.org

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

> Of course, you might have thought about the correct column types in advance,
> but hey :) I think that there's no way to have a rollback-able column type
> change without temporarily doubling space. Actually, I think Oracle has
> some sort of system whereby the column type change is irreversible, and if
> it crashes halfway thru, the table is unusable. You can issue a command on
> the table to pick up where it left off. You continue to do this until it's
> fully complete. However, I think the temporary doubling is probably good
> enough for 90% of our users...

I don't mind temporarily doubling space - mysql docs say that all its
ALTER TABLE stuff (except for renaming) is done by making a copy.

> The main thing I pick up from all of this is that Bugzilla is rather poorly
> written for cross-db compatibility. It should be using a database
> abstraction layer such as ADODB that will let you do a 'replace' in _any_
> database, is type independent, syntax independent, etc.

Yep. BZ isn't very portable - it wasn't a design goal at the time, I
believe. redhat do have an oracle port though, and are working on a
postgres port, so it is possible.

ADODB (or a perl equivalent) is possibly overkill once we get the (legacy)
column typing stuff worked out. BZ doesn't really use any non-basic SQL
functionality, although the query stuff will benefit from subselects.

>
> Chris
>

Bradley