DBIx::Schema
--------------

This module helps abstract the process of working with complex schemas
of relational SQL database tables. As with DBI, it lets you work with
data a row at a time, but gives you the extra ability to, with a
single method call, reach across and grab rows of related data from
tables located elsewhere in your database, without having to construct
an SQL join clause yourself. The 'distance' from the originating table
to the related one can be arbitrarily long, so long as they are
related in some way -- i.e., could both return data through a single
(though perhaps quite lengthy) SQL query.

COPYRIGHT
---------
Copyright (c) 2000 Adelphia.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.

PREREQUISITES
-------------
DBI (and a working DBD driver of course)
DBIx::Abstract

All of the above are available from CPAN.

HOW TO BUILD
------------
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test

HOW TO INSTALL
--------------
make install

CHANGES SINCE THE LAST VERSION
------------------------------
The module used to choke on databases containing circular relationship
paths; i.e., allowing two or more different ways to relate tables A
and B. It now picks the shortest available path (or picks one of the
shortest and generates a warning if there is a tie). These additional
checks make its schema-crawling a tad slower, adding about a
thousandth of a second of CPU time to a simple statement handle
construction, according to the Benchmark module on my P-266, and more
time if it has lots of circular paths to walk to choose from (at which
point I question your database design philosophy anyway ;-) ), but I
consider this a reasonable cost for fixing this yucky bug.