Dumb question on db's other than MySQL

Rails
1

With the exception of certain Oracle DB’s, am I wrong to assume that I
can connect to other types of DBs simply by changing the adapter
parameter in /config/database.yaml? (that seems too simple). If so,
what databses (i.e. the exact strings I would put in for the adapter
parameter) can I connect to?

Lastly, can someone show me an example of connecting to various Oracle
databases? Thank you.

2

Ike wrote:

With the exception of certain Oracle DB’s, am I wrong to assume that I
can connect to other types of DBs simply by changing the adapter
parameter in /config/database.yaml? (that seems too simple). If so,
what databses (i.e. the exact strings I would put in for the adapter
parameter) can I connect to?

Lastly, can someone show me an example of connecting to various Oracle
databases? Thank you.

http://dev.rubyonrails.org/browser/trunk/activerecord/lib/active_record/connection_adapters

From this section of the source it looks like you can simply remove the
“_adapter.rb” from any of those filenames.

I have only ever used MySQL though so I can’t be sure, but I am pretty
confident thats the way it works.

3

I’ve done some Rails work with Oracle, but it was long enough ago that
I’ve forgotten the specific changes required - you should be able to
search this mailing list to find details. I know things have become
simpler since I was working with Oracle early last year, but it was
fairly straightforward even then. There were problems with sequence
numbers and a few other bits and pieces, but they were straightened
out a long time ago within Rails and you shouldn’t have to worry about
them now.

In general, to work with a different database, the only file you’ll
need to change is database.yaml. Now, if you’re already some way down
the track developing on MySQL and you decide to switch to Oracle,
there will be migration required, but if it’s a new project, just
change that one file and you’re done.

With SQLite, which I’ve been using lately, you need to specify a
“dbfile” parameter instead of a “database” parameter - it’s not just a
straight matter of changing the existing parameter fields in the file.
However, all the config is within that one file.

Regards

Dave M.