NAME

    TABLEOp - Module for Table level operations

SYNOPSIS

    use TABLEop;

    $titles = new TABLEop ( $dbh, "titles" );

    $titles->insert ( \%data );
    $titles->update ( \%data, \%where );
    $titles->delete ( \%where );
    @all_rows = $titles->select (" where title_id < 10 ");
    %one_row = $titles->select ( " where title_id = 4 ");

DESCRIPTION

    These routines allow you to treat your data as hashes. They generate
    insert, delete, update statments and actually run them against
    the server. It does the work of generating sql for you. It puts
    the necessary quotes if the datatype is char, datetime etc.

    Additionally you could also do select and get all rows as 
    an array of hash-references or get just one row as a single 
    hash-reference.

    Specification of table follows the usual Sybase conventions,
    i.e. if you did not specify absolute name, it looks if the user
    has a table by the same name.

    The module remembers the full path name of the table and uses it
    for all operations. This avoids the  risk of inadvertant
    changes to your application's database context. 

Creating a handle

    use TABLEop;

    $titles = new TABLEop ( $dbh, "titles" );

Inserting

    %data = ('title_id' => 50, 
             'title' => 'Perl Book', 
             'price' => 50.24, 
             'pub_date' => 'Jan 1 1900' );


    $titles->insert ( \%data );

Deleting

    %where = ( 'title_id' => 50 );

    $titles->delete ( \%where );

Updating

    %data = ('title' => 'Perl New Book', 
             'price' => 150.24, 
             'pub_date' => 'Jan 1 2100' );

    %where = ('title_id' = 50 );

    $titles->update ( \%data, \%where );

Selecting

    The select behaves defferently depending on whether you are 
    expecting one row OR many rows.
    If you wantarray, you get an Array of hash-references, 
    else you get just a single hash-reference.

    @all_rows = $titles->select ("where title_id < 50");
    OR 
    @all_rows = $titles->select (""); #Select all the rows !

    foreach $row ( @all_rows) {
        printf "title is %s\n", $row->{'title'};
    }

    OR you could,

    $arow = $title->select ( "where title_id = 30");
    printf "The title is %s.\n", $arow->{'title');

Features wanted, unwanted

    Currently does not handle NULL in update/delete/insert.
    This will cause an error. All error handling is left to the caller.

    It would be nice to automatically generate single row updates
    by figuring out unique key columns. 


    Manish I Shah
    mshah@bfm.com