I was talking with Konsta from Doctrine on IRC about all the different authors of the various database abstraction related php libraries when I had a sudden inspiration: Wouldn't it be cool if we could get all of these authors on a single mailing list, where we could all discuss best practices, new discoveries, challenges etc.?
Now I am hoping that all of you are reading this. I know quite a few of you pretty well already (John, Hans, Manuel etc.). Then again there have been a lot of new projects that started in the last year based on PHP5 and PDO, where I have not been so actively following the new guys. So please everybody come out of the woodwork, send me a mail or post a comment.
While I think its fine for end users to also join the list, the goal is not to create a list for end users to ask questions, but more for people who actively develop database abstraction layers. End users should better go to the respective mailing lists. While I do look forward to discussion the pro's and con's of the approaches taken in the different layers, I do not want to get constant posts like "what is the best DBAL/ORM/whatever for php". Instead I want technical discussions which will aid each of the maintainers to take educated decisions on what approach to implement in their layer.
Awaiting your feedback!
[UPDATE 2007-03-07 09:37 CEST] After all this positive feedback I have asked Ian P. Christian, who is already hosting the doctrine mailing lists, to open up a mailing list for us: mailto:phpdbabstraction+subscribe@lists.pengus.net
[UPDATE 2007-03-08 17:28 CEST] This list is now also accessible via Gmane(.org): http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.php.dbabstraction nntp://news:gmane.comp.php.dbabstraction
Count me in.
While I'm only a maintainer on PEAR DB rather than being actively involved in new DB abstraction development, I'd still be interested in lurking on actively taking part in said mailing list. I definitely think it's a good idea to get some dialogue going on the subject.
Fine with me.
Unfortunately the PHP database abstraction scene has taken the competition route in the past, so I am not sure if all database abstraction developers would be willing to share "their secrets".
Count me in :)
I do agree the PHP database abstraction scene has some competition, but its always the ones that have the most extensive collaboration and the ones that derive from existing solutions that will prevail and shine.
It goes without saying Doctrine is amongst them :) it derives from MDB2 which in turn derives from PEAR::DB and metabase.
+1
yeah, sounds great! i think, that the propel / linguafranca team will like that idea.
I also like this idea.
Please also consider using gmane.org to make the list read- and writable via a news reader. I hate to need to subscribe to real mailing lists. ;-) Usenet is much more comfortable ...
Please give it a good (read-only) web interface somewhere - I'm not a developer of any DBA so i'm not what you want as a subscriber but I'd love to keep up with discussions and developments.
I would be interested in being on this list. I've been a DB maintainer in the past, and we use a ton of database stuff in Horde, as well as having some of our own stuff built on top of, or along side of, other PHP solutions like MDB2.
