It'd be really nice if the Rails guys pulled their heads out of their
arses and recognised that supporting composite keys is a good thing,
and integrated compositekeys directly into ActiveRecord.
I for one can see no disadvantage at all in it being integrated.
ActiveRecord *not* supporting composite keys just makes AR (and hence
Rails too) look like a joke when compared to just about every other
ORM and is a major negative mark against Rails. Since I know
something about building databases that have decent data integrity it
was only after I discovered the compositekeys gem that I could
consider using Rails.
Steve
re CPK support being rolled in to Rails core...
I tackled Koz and Jeremy Kemper on this 12 months ago at RailsConf,
and they were both of the opinion that any changes required to provide
CPK in AR would be perfectly acceptable, as long as the defaults and
normal Rails-ish workflow wasn't changed.
I tried to assemble a group of like-minded folk to help fix this, as I
wasn't
going to tackle it alone, but though there was enthusiasm (see my BOF
on "Enterprise Rails"), those people were mostly of the enterprise
persuasion (surprise!) and not allowed, or interested, or capable or
some
bloody reason, or contributing to such an effort.
Even a test suite that actually runs continuous integration across all
the
major database platforms would be a major achievement. All the
enterprise
database products are available in Express editions, so no licensing is
needed for such a test framework, though distributing a Parallels or
VMWare image that's preconfigured might be objectionable. Choose one
Windows and one *nix platform, create a script that installs and
configures
all known DB products, and runs through a test suite, and Rails database
support will jump about 1000% in credibility overnight. This is what
Python
has for its ADODB ORM, and lack of it is hampering the Ruby+Rails
community immensely.
Personally my motivation to fix AR is somewhat low, as my ActiveFacts
project aims to leapfrog past all other ORMs out there, even Microsoft's
advanced Entity Framework, and provide a completely new way of doing
databases, replacing (but generating) SQL in the process. It's a big
project that's getting close to needing additional contributors - the
basic
framework is getting quite close now.
Clifford Heath, http://dataconstellation.com/ActiveFacts
Brent
=======================================================
Brent Miller
http://www.foliosus.com/
"The problem is that once you have done away with the
ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true
and false, etc., there's no real culture left. All
that remains is clog dancing and macrame."
-- Neal Stephenson
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