Introducing your database team

Posted: 8 January 2009

• Drupal 7
• Drupal

Back when Drupal 7 development opened, our database layer was in a sorry state. Based on PHP 3-era concepts it offered few features, but more importantly no one actually cared about it. On rare occasions we had a PostgreSQL maintainer for the PostgreSQL driver, but they had a tendency to disappear into the Interweb, never to be heard from again.

Boy what a difference a few months make! Not only is the new database layer moving along with a good head of steam, with an order of magnitude more features and now three database drivers in core, but as of earlier tonight we officially have no less than five people on the database maintenance team. From MAINTAINERS.txt:

DATABASE SYSTEM
Larry Garfield 'Crell' <http://drupal.org/user/26398>


MYSQL DRIVER
Larry Garfield 'Crell' <http://drupal.org/user/26398>
David Strauss 'David Strauss' <hhttp://drupal.org/user/93254>


POSTGRESQL DRIVER
Damien Tournoud 'DamZ' <http://drupal.org/user/22211>
Josh Waihi 'fiasco' <http://drupal.org/user/188162>


SQLITE DRIVER
Damien Tournoud 'DamZ' <http://drupal.org/user/22211>
Károly Négyesi 'chx' <http://drupal.org/user/9446>

Quite an impressive team! And more importantly, there's redundancy. That means all three drivers should be getting regular attention, and if someone gets hit by a bus there's still someone actively working to maintain that driver. It also means five people with intimate knowledge of how the database system works. That may well make it the most understood system in Drupal right now. :-)

Let's keep up the good work, guys! There's still much work to do.