[Catalyst] BBC's "Perl on Rails" nuttiness

[Ian Docherty]

I have some first-hand knowledge that could throw some light on this.

I was aware that Catalyst was being used within the iPlayer team, and =

they were contributing many bug fixes back into Catalyst and DBIC. I was =

not aware of this 'Perl on Rails' work. There again the BBC is big so it =

is not surprising that one team does not always know what another team =

is doing.

Catalyst is being used only for back end systems, not customer facing. =

The BBC works almost exclusively on systems that publish HTML rather =

than providing dynamic content.

J. Shirley wrote:
> On Dec 1, 2007 11:29 AM, Jonathan Rockway <jon at jrock.us =

> <mailto:jon at jrock.us>> wrote:
>
>
<snip>
>
>     I think that the 5.6 limitation was the main reason for not using
>     Catalyst.
>
>
> The insanity of a few of their points lead me to believe their Perl on =

> Rails platform is probably not ever going to go anywhere:
>  - "we needed to expose any SQL queries we would make so they could be =

> vetted by DBA's for optimization"
>  - "On the live environment we were told at the time we had Perl 5.6, =

> and a few BBC approved perl modules."
>
> I certainly believe that _some_ SQL queries should be optimized, or =

> rather the database optimized for those queries, making every query =

> that way is just madness.  It certainly isn't extensible.
To support the BBC on this, the SQL needs to be made visible for =

database optimisation, but mainly for the purpose of showing what =

indexes should be put on the tables. Since it is possible to cause the =

generated SQL to be output then this should be sufficient and is no =

reason to avoid an ORM.
>
> The best way to tie developers hands and waste money is by giving them =

> an immutable whitelist of modules.  I wonder how many "utility" =

> methods are in this framework that should be broken out into separate =

> modules -- and in reality, there are probably already 3 modules =

> already doing their utility method.  People really need to get over =

> NIH-Syndrome.
It is not a NIH Syndrome, the BBC live environment is supported and =

maintained by Siemens. You would not believe the time and effort =

involved in getting new modules approved and installed on the live =

system (I am talking months if not years). Is it surprising the =

developers lose patience and design their own ORM when they don't have =

any other option? The DBAs and support teams are also frustrated at this =

since it makes support so much more difficult having all these different =

ways of doing the same thing.

Regards
Ian Docherty

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