[storm] ORM choice discussion at work

[Gustavo Niemeyer]

Hello Brad,

> The choice between Storm and SQLAlchemy has just become a major topic at 
> my place of work. I don't want to start a flame war on this list, so if 
> you are interested in this discussion please respond to me off-list by 
> mailing me directly.

There's no reason why such topics should spawn flame wars in the
list.  We're all reasonable people (aren't we? ;-).

> We are using Storm in a pilot project, using the MS SQL backend we 
> created; it is branched at 
> <https://code.launchpad.net/~zeomega/storm/storm_ms_sql_2005>. It has 
> specific support for mxODBC but is designed with a separate module to 
> allow registering different connectors such as pyodbc, etc. ZeOmega has 
> released it to the community under the same license as Storm.
> 
> So far, Storm with the custom backend is working fine for our project, 
> though it still doesn't pass all the Storm unit tests; I still have some 
> work to do on unicode support and correcting some of the test setups. 
> That's why I haven't yet submitted the branch for review to be added to 
> Storm trunk.

Cool.  Have you noticed we have other branches up for review related to
MS SQL support?

> However, we don't need unicode support for our application (yet!) and 
(...)
> Two of those Python packages now have Storm dependencies, and are 
> beginning to show why an ORM approach results in very manageable code. 
> The next step will be to consider how we can replace the zsql approach 
> used in our Zope 2 and Plone applications.

Sounds sensible.

> Naturally our company leadership is now questioning the choice of Storm, 
> given that it is not as mature as SQLAlchemy.  In particular, they want 

This is somewhat subjective.  We can correctly say, for instance, that
SQLAlchemy wasn't mature enough for us to use it, and that's why we've
created Storm.  I don't want to argue either way, though, since it's
pointless.  Just don't take vague affirmations like that seriously.

> to know if it will be a good fit for Plone, and if anyone is willing to 
> do work to create a Storm storage for "Plone AT" (ATypes?). I don't know 
> much about Plone, but if anyone is doing any Plone/Storm work please let 
> me know.

Sidnei da Silva might know something about this.

> Any insights or contributions to this discussion would be appreciated, 
> and we are open to hiring consultants as well.

That's good to hear.  Thanks for your support, and let us know if we
can help you further.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
http://niemeyer.net