Class-AutoDB This class works closely with Class::AutoClass to provide almost transparent object persistence. You can declare any class to be persistent and can easily store any objects of a persistent class. You can retrieve a stored object explicitly through a query mechansism, or implicitly by following a reference pointing to the object. The persistence mechanism preserves the structure of the object network: if objects A and B pointed to C when they were stored, the retrieval process will reconstruct this relationship. This class presently works only with MySQL. CAUTION: This module is old. We use it internally, and while it works well for our purposes, we urge new users to heed the warnings in the documentation. This release brings the CPAN version of the module up-to-date relative to our internal version, something we should have done long ago. We are resuming active development of the code and expect to release improved versions over the next several months. See the "Roadmap" section in the main documentation. The 't' directory includes separate 'user' and 'developer' test suites. The installation procedure below runs the user test suite. See t/README for more information. The 'docs' directory contains additional documentation. All of this is presently for internal classes. INSTALLATION To install this module, run the following commands: perl Build.PL ./Build ./Build test ./Build install The first step, 'perl Build.PL', makes sure that MySQL is available and that the preson doing the installation has sufficient privileges to run the test suite. If this check fails, Build.PL does not generate the Build script and exits with a 0 return code. This is the idiom recommended for automated CPAN testing but may be too severe for normal installs. The module includes a modified version of Data::Dumper, renamed Class::AutoDB::Dumper. We include both the pure Perl and much faster C (.xs) implementations. Build automatically compiles the C implementation if your system has a C compiler. We see a few compiler warnings when Build does this. These seem benign and can be ignored. The Data::Dumper docs claim that the code will fall back to the pure Perl implementation if the C version is not available. We haven't checked this claim. SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. perldoc Class::AutoDB You can also look for information at: RT, CPAN's request tracker http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Class-AutoDB AnnoCPAN, Annotated CPAN documentation http://annocpan.org/dist/Class-AutoDB CPAN Ratings http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Class-AutoDB Search CPAN http://search.cpan.org/dist/Class-AutoDB/ COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE Copyright (C) 2009 Nat Goodman This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License. See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.