[pmwiki-devel] DataQuery 0.2 beta now available

[ben at interdependentweb.com]

Happy Holidays, everybody!

Why the generic holiday greeting, when it's obviously Christmas  
morning?  Well, I meant to post this on the last day of Hannukah,  
which was also the day after Solstice... but PmWiki.org was down, and  
then I got distracted by holiday obligations, and now I'm the only one  
up early.  ;-)

In any case, I just wanted to share that version 0.2 beta of DataQuery  
is now available in the Cookbook.  It doesn't look like much, because  
I'm still working on the GUI, but it represents a total rewrite of  
version 0.1.

Why should you care?  Well, for one thing, you can now easily change  
the key field of a query, so that instead of referring to records as  
Users/101 you can go to Users/BenStallings instead, if you want, even  
if the key field is calculated by a SQL command.  This should mean  
that tables that have no primary key -- which some of you were trying  
in vain to use with earlier versions -- should work now, and I'm eager  
to hear whether that is the case.

But for another thing, the reason I completely rewrote version 0.1 to  
0.2 was to separate the DataQuery object (which queries the database)  
from the DataStore object (which portrays records as wiki pages).   
This means there's the potential for other recipes to work with either  
of these objects separately.  In other words, if you want to use  
DataQuery's queries in your own recipe but don't want to represent  
records as pages in the wiki, you can work directly with the DataQuery  
object(s); and if you have other types of queries (such as crosstabs)  
that you want to display in the wiki, you can work directly with the  
DataStore object.

Not the top priority of most of you on a major holiday, I'm sure, but  
I just wanted to plant the seed for later.  :-)

It's been a real joy and privilege to work with you all in 2006!  I  
look forward to future collaboration in 2007!  --Ben S.