[TYPO3] trouble with DBAL and so_chat extension

[marcel.gsteiger at milprog.ch]

Ries van Twisk schrieb:
> how does your DBAL config look like?

I configured DBAL to use the _DEFAULT access via adodb (for starting; 
later on I will want to switch over to PostgreSQL). This way I can 
simply remove/reinstall ADODB as long as I use MySQL, and everything 
should continue to work in an identical fashion.

The typo3 APIs are new to me; I think that perhaps the TCA is not 
properly initialized. The Core API doc says that, for extension tables, 
one should load the TCA before using the tables. So I thought I now can add

  t3lib_div::loadTCA("tx_sochat_messages");

as the first statement in the function getNewMessages() and 
setMessage(). There was a small success: the system did not complain 
anymore about not knowing the table; it then gives another message:

Undefined index: columns while calling getNewMessages [...]

To me it looks like the TCA gets initialized from ext_tables.php but the 
additions from tca.php are missing.

I don't still understand why these problems only happen when the DBAL is 
loaded, perhaps the DBAL forgets to pull in the tca when it recognizes a 
table in a SQL statement? Moreover, I don't understand why 
t3lib_div::loadTCA does not properly load the whole TCA section for this 
table. But perhaps you have an idea how this could be fixed?

Regards
--Marcel