Alzabo is a two-fold program. Its first function is as a data modelling tool. Through either a schema creation interface or a custom perl program, you can create a set of schema, table, column, etc. objects that represent your data model. Alzabo is also capable of reverse engineering an existing data model. Its second function is as a RDBMS to object mapping system. Once you have created a schema, you can use the Alzabo::Runtime::Table and Alzabo::Runtime::Row classes to access its data. These classes offer a high level interface to common operations such as SQL SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE commands. To take it a step further, you could then aggregate a set of rows from different tables into a larger container object which could understand the logical relationship between these tables. The Alzabo::MethodMaker module can be very helpful in this regard. For more information please see the Alzabo (start with perldoc Alzabo) or the Alzabo homepage at http://alzabo.sourceforge.net/. The full documentation in HTML form is available at http://alzabo.sourceforge.net/docs/ Install information is in the INSTALL file. SUPPORT The Alzabo docs are conveniently located online at http://alzabo.sourceforge.net/docs/. There is also a mailing list. You can sign up at http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alzabo-general. Please don't email me directly. Use the list instead so others can see your questions. UPGRADING If you have an older version of Alzabo installed and you want to continue to use older schema objects you need to do the following steps _before_ installation. Run the convert.pl script in the eg/ directory. By default, it will attempt to convert all your schemas. This script generates files containing Perl code which will recreate your schema with the latest of version of Alzabo. Once you've run the convert.pl script for the all schemas you need to upgrade, install the latest version of Alzabo. Then run the files created by the convert.pl script. This overwrites your old files so _make backups first_! BUGS - Forking apps and Postgres In testing, I found that there were some problems using Postgres in a situation where you start the app, connect to the database, get some data, fork, reconnect, and and then get more data. I suspect that this has more to do with the DBD::Pg driver and/or Postgres itself than Alzabo. I don't believe this would be a problem with an app which forks before ever connecting to the database (such as mod_perl). I have structured the test suite to avoid this problem in testing but forewarned is forearmed (or something like that). - make_html_docs.pl and Pod::Html There are links in the pod for Alzabo/Runtime/Table.pm back to Alzabo.pm that Pod::Html fails to resolve. This causes warnings when running make_html_docs.pl. However, the generated HTML file is processed to correct these problems. CREDITS Thanks very much to Randal Schwartz for spending time with me on IRC helping me find problems with the install process. Bob Gustafson has provided extensive assistance in testing and debugging. Ilya Martynov has provided lots of suggestions, as well as actual code. Some features in Alzabo have been borrowed or influenced by Class:DBI (Michael Schwern and Tony Bowden) and Tangram (Jean-Louis Leroy). Various bug reports and assistance from: Robin Berjon Terrence Brannon Rami Cohen-Scali Martin Ertl Robert Goff Raul Nohea Goodness Michael Graham Sam Horrocks Aaron Johnson Dana Powers Ron Savage