[Mailman-Developers] Informal "MEP" process, anyone? [was: PHP Wrappers?]

[Fil]

> The MySQLMemberAdaptor you guys produced is quite good.

I must point out that there are two versions currently:

- the original written by Kev Green, available @
        http://www.orenet.co.uk/

- my somehow extensive rewrite of Kev's work, available @
        http://trac.rezo.net/trac/rezo/browser/Mailman/

We will hopefully be able to merge things back together when I find time to
debug my stuff and Kev finds time to review the changes

> IMHO, a final version to be included in 2.2 branch should include:

I'm not sure version 2.2 should wait for this to be stabilized... it
depends, at the very least, on our collective capacity testing/building it.

> 1) Abstractions of SQL queries on a per list basis, i.e. I don't want to
> necessarily have to use your schema. Your schema should be the default,
> but I want to be able to override it to best integrate it into existing
> user databases.

Yes, that's the way "sympa" does. It can be very complex to implement if you
want full genericity. What could be done, though, is a mapping of the field
names (instead of fixed names), and some relaxing of the requirements of
available fields (we don't necessarily need to store bounce information if
we don't process bounces, for instance); but I don't think it's worth the
work authorizing to store bounce information in table A and subscription
info in table B, for example.

> 2) Ability to switch MemberAdaptors through the web interface as well as
> configure SQL queries through the web interface.

A first step could be to decide the MemberAdaptor at the time of creation.
Switching from an adaptor to another can be fairly long if you have many
many subscribers, and you can't assure that the process will not be killed
before it finishes.

However I think that the extend.py mechanism is already a good step fwd, as
it allows to have some lists on the MySQL backend, and the others on the
classical pickle thing.

> But yeah, that's my pipe dream. I'd be happy to help hack some of that
> out if that would be helpful.

You're most welcome!

-- Fil