Hi! I'm working on a little project to represent database tables as simple classes. For example, if you had a table with the following definition ( in sql ) 
create table my_database..foo
(    bar int ,
     baz varchar(10)
)

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Then you would have a simple class my_database::foo with members int and baz. I'd like to solve this by having a Table package which handles the creation of the my_database::foo package for you. IE as a user you'd simply 
use Table ( { -dbase => "my_database", -table => "foo" } );

my $f = my_database::foo->new( { bar => 1, baz => "neat" } );

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</code> The Table class's import method() will query the local database my_database for the columns of the foo table, and then (I use Class::MethodMaker ) construct the class defintion of my_database_foo ( at _compile_ time!). So, specifically, 

#Table's import method
sub import {
    my ( $class, @args ) = @_;
    my $href = $args[0];
    #sanity checking on href...
    my ( $dbase, $table ) = ( $args->{-dbase}, 
                              $args->{table} );

    #get_columns returns a reference to an array
    #containing the columns.
    my $columns = get_columns( $dbase, $table );
   
    #this is where I get stuck.
    package $dbase::$table;  
    @ISA = qw(Table);
    use Class::MethodMaker;
    make methods 
        get_set => $columns,
        new_hash_init => 'init';

    #broquaint suggested this, but he didn't like it
    #"this is just so very very wrong" --broquaint
    #the idea is to export the $dbase::$table package
    #definition to the caller

    *{"main::$dbase::$table::"} = *{"$dbase::table"};
}

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Perhaps another way to solve this would be to subclass the Table package , passing it the database and table name. Perhaps this is better, because ( this is another question ) would I ever be allowed to do something like this? 
use Table ( { -dbase => "mydb", -table => "foo" } );
use Table ( { -dbae  => "someotherdb", -table => "bar" } );
#results in the exporting of 2 class definitions:
#mydb::foo and someotherdb::bar

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as opposed to 
package mydb::foo;
@ISA = qw(Table);

package someotherdb::bar;
@ISA = qw(Table);

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Anyhow, hope this isn't too rambling, thanks all in advance.

In reply to constructing dynamic class definitions at compile time (from schema definition) by sozinsky

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