Object::POOF version 0.0.6

THIS LIBRARY IS STILL HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR USE.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I am always suspicious of companies trying to lay claim to 
my work in contracts, so I am releasing this work so far
because I start another job tomorrow.  Mark Hedges 2005-09-06.

Object::POOF and sub-packages are an alpha-state development
library intended to provide an OO entity interface for mod_perl.
They will include a framework for developing form processing 
functions under mod_perl custom handlers with de-tainting.
The object interface uses a hash structure in the definitions
of entity objects to define relationships of various types to
other entity classes.  Then, a group of entities can be selected
and auto-populated by specifying an arbitrary depth from a point
of view using a similar hash parameter.  Data loading can be
structured to increase efficiency.  New design goals include:

  - PBP inside-out classes (and implementation of other PBP 
    guidelines.)

  - Extensive test-driven development (for a change).

  - Proper exception hierarchies.

  - Forget the pre-fetch call statement, trick -> operator
    into looking ahead to gen/pop whole join statement if
    you don't want to pre-call.  (Thanks for this insight 
    to Damian Conway.)

  - Thread-safe functionality under apache2 worker mpm.
    (Can this be done with inside-out classes? Maybe by
    making the Ranch (the object pool) a safe controller
    of who gets what objects, cloning read-only objs, etc.)

  - Object pool - Ranch will keep track of last-select timestamps, 
    refresh timeouts, etc. similar to EJB entity bean pool and 
    dole objects out to requests to connect to database threads
    that belong to apache connections (like assigning entity
    beans to database session beans.)

  - Implementation using many CPAN classes, especially for
    the web form processor wrapper, which can use any
    generation or template system (I'm going to try
    CGI::FormBuilder with Template Toolkit).  I wonder if
    it will be able to work as an AJAX style processor.

  - Eventually, a business framework including a ledger system.

INSTALLATION

To install this module, run the following commands:

    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make test
    make install

(Maybe? I haven't checked.)


DEPENDENCIES

Lots...


COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2005, Mark Hedges <hedges@ucsd.edu>

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