management has decided that we will be refactoring the codebase of our mod_perl web app. i'm looking at our database access methods and trying to decide whether to re-structure them. here's the code i've inherited.
module layout:

EG/DB.pm
EG/DB/
EG/DB/Access.pm
EG/DB/Clients.pm
EG/DB/Vendors.pm
EG/DB/Employees.pm
EG/Example.pm
[download]

relevant code from modules:

package EG::DB.pm;
 use DBI;
 sub new { db connection happens here }
 sub commit {...}

package EG::DB::Access.pm
  use base 'EG::DB::Clients';
  use base 'EG::DB::Vendors';
  use base 'EG::DB::Employees';

package EG::DB::Clients;
  use base 'EG::DB';
  sub get_client_id_for_username { ... }

package EG::Example;
  use EG::DB::Access;
  my $dbh        = EG::DB::Access->new();
  my $client_id  = $dbh->get_client_id_for_username($client_username);
[download]

the good:

• none of the db modules need to know about each other, they only know about EG::DB.
• none of the client code needs to know about the specific modules, all methods are accessed through EG::DB.
• if methods move, for some strange reason, from one module to another, no calling code needs to be updated
• adding new db modules only necessitates a change to EG::DB::Access (an additional 'use base ...') and new 'use' statements don't need to be added to any other existing modules.

not so good:

• for certain calls, search path seems longer than is necessary, so when client code calls a db method:

EG::Example->get_client_id_for_username()
[download]

searches:

       EG::DB::Access   (no match) 
       EG::DB::Clients  (no match) 
       EG::DB::Vendors  (no match) 
       EG::DB::Employee (match)
[download]

and is even longer for the few methods in EG::DB such as when client code calls "new" or "commit" method:

       EG::DB::Access   (no match) 
       EG::DB::Clients  (no match) 
       EG::DB::Vendors  (no match) 
       EG::DB::Employee (no match) 
       EG::DB           (match)
[download]

so is it bad enough to warrant re-structuring? is the longish search path that expensive with mod_perl or should we just leave it alone. Does it really buy us that much convenience? Should Access.pm be rolled into EG::DB to eliminate one additional search level? Thanks for any opinions.

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