Rails - Mar 2006 - Rails noob db questions

Hi, I''m trying to get my head around rails, but the documentation seems
sparse at best (and manuals.rubyonrails.com is unreachable from my location
for whatever reason). I''m trying to figure out a few things:

1) The documentation for the magicfields mentions using datetimes instead of
timestamps, which pgsql doesn''t appear to support. What''s the
answer in this
case?

2) All the tutorials seem to be geared towards trivial data relationships.
What if I have table SHOP and table PERSON, but each record in SHOP has a
OWNER, MANAGER, and a collection of EMPLOYEES. How should you structure this
in your tablespace to take the best advantage of activerecord?

3) Am I wrong in the assumption that all this needs to be sorted out at the
database level before I go and generate models and controllers? Where do you
put code that you don''t want to get blatted if and when the schema
changes
and you need to regenerate?

TIA,
-Josh

--
          "wookin'' pa nub in all da wong paces, wookin''
pa nub"

              [ Josh ''G-Funk'' McDonald ]  --   [ 0437 221 380
]
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On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 10:01 +1000, Josh McDonald wrote:
> Hi, I''m trying to get my head around rails, but the documentation
> seems sparse at best (and manuals.rubyonrails.com is unreachable from
> my location for whatever reason). I''m trying to figure out a few
> things: 
> 
> 1) The documentation for the magicfields mentions using datetimes
> instead of timestamps, which pgsql doesn''t appear to support.
What''s
> the answer in this case?
----
fields named ''created_on'' ''updated_on''
''created_at'' ''updated_at'' should
work
----
> 
> 2) All the tutorials seem to be geared towards trivial data
> relationships. What if I have table SHOP and table PERSON, but each
> record in SHOP has a OWNER, MANAGER, and a collection of EMPLOYEES.
> How should you structure this in your tablespace to take the best
> advantage of activerecord? 
----
I think the Active Web Development With Rails discusses this - so does
some of the wiki pages...I think it''s called STI (single table
inheritance) - that would be one way of handling the employees, owners,
managers within one table.
----
> 
> 3) Am I wrong in the assumption that all this needs to be sorted out
> at the database level before I go and generate models and controllers?
> Where do you put code that you don''t want to get blatted if and
when
> the schema changes and you need to regenerate? 
----
Not at all...I think you are on the mark...get it sorted out now before
you have to go back and fix a bunch of forms/lists/etc.

Craig