[Catalyst] DBIC and RDBO compared (was: Choosing the right ORM)

[John Siracusa]

On 11/30/05 7:23 PM, Perrin Harkins wrote:
> One important feature which Class::DBI supports (and I assume DBIC
> supports this as well) is the use of arbitrary SQL to fetch objects.
> Some database operations are just much better expressed in SQL than in a
> complex perl data structure, especially if you want access to vendor-
> specific extensions like the Oracle tree stuff.  With Class::DBI, you
> can write some hairy SQL query and let it do all the drudge work to turn
> the resulting rows into objects.  This is a key feature for me.

RDBO supports raw SQL in the WHERE clause, if desired.  There's also a
get_objects_from_sql() Manager method that's currently commented out:

http://search.cpan.org/src/JSIRACUSA/Rose-DB-Object-0.54/lib/Rose/DB/Object/
Manager.pm

I just can't think of anything it can do that can't be done better using one
of the other features.  If you can give me some example scenarios, that'll
help me get an idea of what people actually use this kind of feature for.

-John