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Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:44:16 +0100
From: Ross Gardler <rgardler@apache.org>
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To: dev@forrest.apache.org
Subject: Re: OSCommerce input plugin
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Brian M Dube wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
> 
>> Brian M Dube wrote:
>>
>>> Due to the approaching deadline for this project, I'm going to 
>>> proceed with the code in place. 
>>
>>
>> When is your deadline and exactly what do you need Forrest to output 
>> by that date? Unless you are a long way down the road with your 
>> scraping code I would suggest that using the plugin woud be faster for 
>> you as it only involves writing stylesheets to provide the required 
>> output format. Well, that's not wuite true, there is some Java code 
>> that needs writing too, but the framework is in place so the code 
>> needed is pretty much "standard fare", such as creating the XML 
>> representatin of each bean as a string.
> 
> 
> We leave for an extended business trip 18 July. The powers that be would 
> like to see the catalog done before we leave.
> 
> I'm sorry I failed to mention that I'm now using 
> whiteboard/org.apache.forrest.plugin.Database to generate the data. 
> Thank you for pointing out that it is possible, and better, to access 
> the back end directly.

Cool, but my new approach for talking to the database (i.e. hibernate) 
is better from a maintenance point of view as it doesn't tie us to a 
specific back end. Furthermore it provides POJO's for manipulating the 
data. It works in a limited fashion and is already more complete with 
respect to getting data out of an OSCommerce back end than the raw 
database plugin.

>> I can't put the code in our SVN as it uses Hibernate which is LGPL. I 
>> can make it available in a private repository, and move it into a 
>> plugins project on sourceforge when it is set up.
> 
> 
> I get an error running the Hibernate example, java.sql.SQLException: 
> Duplicate entry. That sounds like an issue with the test data, so I 
> think the installation is fine. I haven't yet grasped how to add it into 
> the mix.

Not sure what you mean by the "hibernate example", but my current plugin 
work already has that sorted out so you can pretty much leave this part 
to me. You can focus on the POJO's to represent the model and the XSLT's 
to render the model as you need it. I can focus on the glue between the 
database the POJO's and Forrest.

Would you like me to send it to you offlist so you can have a look at 
the proof of concept?

Since you still seem to be at a very early stage I'd love for us to work 
together on this code, I can put it in an SVN repository and make it 
available under LGPL (hibernate restriction). I'd prefer to make it 
ASL2, but would need more time to cleanly separate the dependencies so 
that will have to come later.

I don't think July 18th will be a problem unless you are a long way down 
the road to implementation using the database plugin. In which case we 
should go our separate ways until you have more breathing space then we 
can bring the two solutions together into a finished product.

Ross