Re: Database Accessor Classes

[hv]

My own homegrown solution allows me to specify 'defer' on selected non-key fields; the database abstraction arranges that deferred fields are not fetched from the database until an accessor for one of the deferred fields is called, at which point all the deferred fields for that record are fetched.

This approach is available only for keyed tables, since the deferred fields are fetched using the (already present) key fields.

I find this approach easy to use and quite predictable. The only caveat is that care must be taken a) in choosing which fields to defer, and b) in applications that handle collections of records that may look at deferred fields in each of those records, since I'm doing an additional SELECT for each record that needs access to the deferred fields.

Because of (b), I also have a nasty hack I use to override this behaviour for selected classes in the occasional script that knows it needs access to deferred fields in all of the records of a collection. I've kept it as a nasty hack to deter overuse, but that's probably the wrong way to do it. (FWIW, the hack is currently used by 2 out of around 120 scripts in the application.)

Hugo