[Phpmyadmin-devel] Roadmap? Feature plans for PMA 3.0?

[Michal Čihař]

Hi

On 15.04.2004 16:40 +0200, Marcel Tschopp wrote:
> Olivier wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 12:23 +0200, Garvin Hicking wrote:
> > > - Get sessions to work, to get around POST/GETing the SQL query or the resultset
> > > data from page to page. This is the reason for many timeout/browser problems
> > > when editing records
> > 
> > using php-sessions, or a custom system, based for example on a mysql
> > table?  
> Yes, for session security I think it is better to use a mysql table to
> store session data. And the user has not to use cookies...

Php sessions work also without cookies and you can store them anywhere
you want (see session_set_save_handler). This is definitely less work
than custom system and also probably more efficient.

> > > - After that is all done, make PMA work on all OpenSource RDBMS ;)
> > 
> > This would be interesting, but would not be phpmyadmin anymore.
> > This could be called 'PearDbAdmin', 'PhpDbAdmin', 'PhpAdodbAdmin',
> > etc... :)
> > 
> > just googled a bit: phpdbadmin is already there, at least on SF:
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpdbadmin/, but: 
> > "Development Status: 1 - Planning", and seems to be dead. Description
> > is: "PHP-based (multiple-)database administration utility. Bringing
> > multiple database servers and multiple databases together into one
> > simple web-based interface. The power of PHP and the ease of the web.
> > Currently planned to allow easy simultaneous access"
> 
> If we would make a code rewrite, it would be easy to make phpMyAdmin
> (phpDBAdmin?) to work with postgresSQL. Other DBs could also be
> integrated... :-)

I do not thing it is so easy. Each DB has specific features and to make
one code support them all it would become much complicated.

> > - get rid of all the HTML/javascript code from the PHP files
> >   -> templates. would require quite a lot of work, so 
> >      probably it would be good to start from scratch
> +1 for templates. The coding would be much easier!

I agree.

> > - focus on php5/mysql 4.1+ only  (and of course continue to improve
> >   PMA 2.x for php4 and mysql4)
> My idea is also to make the code cleaner, eg. use an oo-style api (php5),
> pear coding standarts, pear documentation standarts etc. 
> 
> > - newbie / expert mode  (newbie -> for example to let my mother update
> >   her guestbook entries, expert -> for php devels, etc.)

Would be nice and it is much requested, but it's hard to determine what
all should be in newbie mode => user should be able to select what he
wants to see...

> > - use "standard" gettext/po files for translations 

Probably easier to maintain, but it increases number of php modules
needed. How is it with gettext availability on windows?

> > - online interface for translations (put all the strings in a db, to
> >   let the translators update their stuff directely)

Do you know any system that would allow this for po fileS?

> > - we currently have a low manpower. Any plan will have to take this into account,
> > even though I agree that the release of 3.0 can attract some other developers
> Agreed. Eventually we should write that on the phpmyadmin.net homepage?
> 
> > 
> > - we have a very big features requests list; some day we will have to deal with it
> Yes, but at the moment it is really hard to implement those features. As
> I said above I would really like to make a complete rewrite for 3.0.0.
> How do you think about that?
> 
> > 
> > - bug fixing takes a lot of time (but I agree that a part of this could be avoided
> > with some structural changes in the code)
> Some structural changes or complete rewrite? :-)

Starting from scratch would help much. It is much work and I'm not sure
whether it is necessary right now. But the session stuff is needed and
it will trigger many changes, so it's probably good reason for complete
rewrite. When talking about this, we should also thing about another
version control, that would allow more distributed development (I'm
talking about GNU Arch = tla).

-- 
Regards
	Michal Čihař
	http://cihar.com