The Future

[tyrsson]

This thread is for the async discussion of where we see it going and how to get there.
@settermjd @simon-mundy

[tyrsson]

Considerations.

• Laminas ServiceManager v4 support.
• Splitting all platforms to satellite packages other than MySQL (Maria), Postgres, SQLite.
• New Features being provided as laminas db features via a "feature" repo.

[tyrsson]

I'd also like to examine the AbstractRowGateway default methods, as the save() method for me is inferior to that of the original ZF1 - all data columns are used to save in inserts and updates which does not necessarily reflect the actual change of data. E.g. If a record has a TIMESTAMP field, this will be written by the value in the record $data rather than allowing the database to use default values. A better way to handle this is to track modifications to individual columns, use only the columns that have set values for INSERTS/UPDATES and then reset the modification tracking every time a record is updated.

I suppose the question becomes. Where does the list of columns come from? Must the end user then define all columns? I suppose if we detect that there is an attached cache we could pull the metadata upon initialization and cache it if $columns is empty?

[simon-mundy]

The TableGateway\Feature\MetaDataFeature allows this to happen automagically. So I think it would be best to either allow the manual population of columns (which could also happen from config files, thus bringing into play CLI Tools), or using this MetaDataFeature to make this happen. And yes, having the ability to cache is possible already, as you can pass an array of metadata into the MetaDataFeature constructor.

So perhaps:

$this->sharedData['metadata'] = [
    'primaryKey' =>[], // An array for primary key/s
    'columns' => [], // Column names as defined in database
    'modified' => [], // Map with column name as key and strict boolean as value
];

Perhaps for the MetaDataFeature we could also add a setMetaDataStorage method to use a StorageInterface and allow a second $options argument in the constructor to make this process a little less cumbersome.

[settermjd]

Also interesting to me would be to use the #[\SensitiveParameter] across the Adapters where possible

That sounds like an excellent idea.

[settermjd]

Considerations.

* Laminas ServiceManager v4 support.

* Splitting all platforms to satellite packages other than MySQL (Maria), Postgres, SQLite.

* New Features being provided as laminas db features via a "feature" repo.

Why not split all of them out, then add a meta package that allows for them to be installed/added fairly trivially?

[settermjd]

Also for discussion:-

* Native Logger/Debugger tool to integrate with Laminas Developer Toolbar

* Drop support for IBMDB2, Oci8, Sqlsrv

Why do you want to drop support for the commercial databases? I get why, as getting access to them isn't necessarily trivial and it significantly adds to the work of maintaining the project. However, I believe there are "core" versions available that can be used free of charge that support the entire database engine of the respective vendor.

* Separate subpackage for tooling database model definitions (TableGateway/RowGateway) using Laminas CLI

Hmmm, this might be a good idea. I know what I did make heavy use of them. I think we'd need to make sure they were as easy to integrate as possible. Though, composer require does that fairly trivially.

* Separate subpackage for DB Validators (NoRecordExists, RecordExists) plus exploration of new?

* Separate subpackage for Laminas Paginator Adapter

This makes a lot of sense as it's not really a core aspect of functionality.

* Separate subpackage for Laminas Cache Storage Adapter

Doing this would be helpful for opening up the ability to support all manner of cache adapters.

* Resolution of Enhancements/issues for obsoleted package ([Add missing return types for classes implementing core interfaces laminas/laminas-db#311](https://github.com/laminas/laminas-db/issues/311), [Make an 'or' and 'and' method in Laminas\Db\Sql\Predicate\Predicate? laminas/laminas-db#246](https://github.com/laminas/laminas-db/issues/246), plus Bugs where relevant)