Quickly View Contents Of An Array

[Trevor DeVore]

On Feb 9, 2010, at 7:48 PM, Andrew Kluthe wrote:

> And is SQL Yoga worth it? My boss told me I can get whatever plugins  
> I need
> to improve my productivity. I looked into it a bit but it seems to  
> be what I
> have my DB handlers written for.
>
> What is the benefit of SQL Yoga  vs Custom handlers?

Sorry, I missed this question the first time around until I saw Bob's  
response.

Here are just some of the benefits I get with SQL Yoga. As background  
I've been working with SQL Databases for over 12 years so I'm not  
relying on SQL Yoga to write SQL that I don't already know.

Basics

* SQL Yoga allows you to think of your Database, tables and records as  
objects.

* SQL Yoga manages the connection ids and cursor ids for you behind  
the scenes.

* SQL Yoga plays the role of a database interface library that you  
would write by hand in a Revolution project. It knows all about your  
schema so there is no shim layer to write or update. Just use the SQL  
Yoga commands for creating, updating, deleting or querying records.

* SQL Yoga allows you to interact with data in the database using  
arrays. This speeds up development time considerably.

* Since you are creating objects and setting properties as opposed to  
wrapping hand-written SQL strings in functions you can experiment and  
iterate more quickly.

* SQL Yoga allows english strings in search conditions (begins with,  
ends with, etc.).


Table Objects
- SQL Yoga can treat your tables as objects.

* Define specific search conditions using scopes. Multiple scopes can  
be added to a query based on UI input and a WHERE clause is  
automatically generated for you based on all scope conditions.

* Add properties to your tables. For example, a property that returns  
a date column in the database as a nicely formatted string or a  
property that returns a full name based on the values of the FirstName  
and LastName columns in a record.

* Add data validation routines that get called when creating or  
updating data in a table.

* Add callbacks that get called when creating, updating or deleting  
data.


Table Relationships
- You can tell SQL Yoga about table relationships and then leverage  
those relationships in your code.

* SQL Yoga automatically generates joins for you and can convert query  
results into a hierarchal nested array.

* Given a record from a table SQL Yoga can fetch all related records  
in a related table.

* SQL Yoga has commands for automatically linking/unlinking records in  
related tables.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems
ScreenSteps: http://www.screensteps.com
Releasable Revolution Resources for Developers: http://revolution.bluemangolearning.com