[Dbix-class] Thoughts about "complex" searches.

[Jesper Krogh]

I discussed this on IRC the other day and the initial response was to create
a view in the database for the purpose. View's are just evil since they
usually dont allow updating the table in the proper way.

So. The problem is:

Given the artist that has many traces.

Artists: (aid, name,birth, etc, etc)
Tracks: (tid,aid,name,recorded, etc. etc.)

I'd like to search for the "joined set". Give me the tracks that
has been recorded by artists born before a given date.

This is easily composed in SQL by :

select tid from artists,tracks where artist.aid = tracks.aid and
artists.birth < $date;

And should return (in DBIx::Class terms) an iterator on tracks, which
by the nature of the ORM gives easy access to the artist.

There is a quite common subset of table-joins that seems fit well
in the concept of the ORM. Allthough more "complex" things af "left outer
joins" and stuff like that are harder to fit in.

A suggestion would be to implement a $table->search_joined() that
can just join the tables on the keys and put a SQL::Abstract-where clause
on that query.

Have I missed something obvious? Does people really prefer to solve this
usecase using a view?

Jesper
-- 
Jesper Krogh