[isf-wifidog] Thoughts on implementing an ORM in WifiDog

[François Proulx]

I really think that in order to provide a scalable and lightweight  
solution, we will absolutely need to implement a good open source ORM  
solution in Wifidog (realistically I think we'll start doing it after  
v1.0, since it's a very critical change in the core).

Why ? Simply because if you analyze the flow on many pages (take  
hotspot_status.php for example) we generate dozens of SQL queries  
each time, not mentionning that we could as of now use persistent  
connections to postgresql... (i think I'll investigate it today).  
Simply to display the hotspot status there will be a ton of exactly  
identical queries (like node->getNetwork() ) . Since we do not have  
any cache, these eat much resources. Also, managing the ORM is such a  
pain in the ass now... There are a few very very good ORM solutions  
for PHP5 now, almost as good as Hibernate (in the J2EE community).

Take these 2 examples :
   - Doctrine : http://www.phpdoctrine.com/
   - Propel : http://propel.phpdb.org/trac/

These are the most actively developped ORM solutions now.

Doctrine looks very interesting :
http://www.phpdoctrine.com/comparison.php

more food for thought...