Data Description Protocol

The Aliro project wants to move away from including SQL in extension packaging or in the framework installation routines. The reason for this is that SQL is difficult to parse, with no suitable open source library ready for the purpose. Yet it is desirable to be able to analyse the specification for current database tables in order to automate update mechanisms. Given that Aliro already makes extensive use of XML, the obvious direction to take is to look for an XML database description.

As there is already such a description scheme in existence as a result of the work of the Propel project (also used in the Symfony PHP framework), Aliro will adopt the Propel scheme.