should ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter have method to get currently connected database version?

[Gary Weaver]

Noticed earlier that I didn't see a way to get at the currently connected db server's version in an adapter (although some adapters look at the version for various things, so it is there for some).

What do you guys think about a new method on ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter called server_version to return nil, and then implement in each appropriate adapter (from what I can see sqlite, mysql, and pg adapters already have it but don't expose it).

In addition, could add a server_type method to return nil and it would return the type of database (which at least for some is currently the adapter_name like "MySQL", PostgreSQL", etc.).

Then could add to the migration DSL (and maybe on base connection?) to expose these two as class methods (so they would call those methods on the adapter), so that if you are doing DB specific things in a migration (or with the base connection), the app developer could more easily add constraints and use DB-specific sql.

I'm sure there is a reason that this wasn't exposed before now, but I had assumed this was already there and was surprised it wasn't when I looked, so thought it would be worth asking about...

[Gary Weaver]

and maybe on base connection

Sorry- connection is an instance of the adapter, so it would already have these methods if they were on the adapter. (Was thinking ActiveRecord::Base.connection because I use that in some scripts and didn't stop to think that was the adapter). So the methods would be on the two abstract adapters, postgres and sqlite adapter I guess, and then schema_statements.rb would expose them as well so could be used in migrations.