[Haskell-cafe] Haskell and DB : giving up

[Ketil Malde]

Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> writes:

> And it reminds me to release the galois sqlite3 bindings, which do
> happily work with 6.8. Surely one of the other 15 haskell db bindings
> would also work.

I think this is the problem, not the solution.  There is a lot of DB
libraries, just like there are a multitude of XML libraries, several
collections, etc.  Too many libraries are written as research projects
or by grad students, and left to rot after release.  The fragmentation
also means that few libraries see any extensive testing - I was a bit
surprised that apparently none of the XML libraries can handle files
larger than a few megabytes, for instance.

You're probably right that one of them would work, but especially new
users will have no way of knowing which one.  Only after the user 
has given up do people post similar experiences.

This is getting better, of course - hackage will grow usage
and activity statistics and perhaps ratings, the wiki will be extended
with recommendations, more people will get involved in development.
But at the moment, this is a problem.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants