Using a more universal abstraction layer will not solve the problem. That's because the problem is not about executing SQL queries on various databases, as they are more or less compatible. The real problem is about creating and updating the database schema. There are already three scripts for PostgreSQL, MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 4.1 or newer. For each new version there must be also an update script and the SQL syntax for modifying the schema is different for each database.
And all of this must be tested. I have pgsql and mysql running on my laptop, but I simply cannot test each new version with every possible database. If you can do that for mssql, that would be great, but that's not a one time job. Once I provide support for a certain database, I cannot drop it with a newer release. Besides, installing mysql or pgsql on Windows is not really a great problem IMO.
That's a very good idea, it would allow to install the system on more hosts. I scheduled this feature into Stage 1. Thanks!
Regards,
Michał
Have you considered ADODB for the database abstraction. This would make support for a multitude od databases easy, as I do everyday with web apps.
Porting to it would be easy. Possibly a mornings work which am prepared to do as I need M$ sql ;-(
http://adodb.sourceforge.net/
Using a more universal abstraction layer will not solve the problem. That's because the problem is not about executing SQL queries on various databases, as they are more or less compatible. The real problem is about creating and updating the database schema. There are already three scripts for PostgreSQL, MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 4.1 or newer. For each new version there must be also an update script and the SQL syntax for modifying the schema is different for each database.
And all of this must be tested. I have pgsql and mysql running on my laptop, but I simply cannot test each new version with every possible database. If you can do that for mssql, that would be great, but that's not a one time job. Once I provide support for a certain database, I cannot drop it with a newer release. Besides, installing mysql or pgsql on Windows is not really a great problem IMO.
Regards,
Michał