Dear SqueakDBX team,

this is indeed great news and I hope that now people turn up and give  
SqueakDBX a try in their production environment. I recall at least 2  
Squeakers who where in need of classical RDBMS support for their existing  
databases and took the freedom cc'ing them.

Frank, Rob, can you give us your impressions on using SqueakDBX in your  
shop?

Thanks for the good work SqueakDBXers !

/Klaus

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:17:30 +0200, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:

> Hi folks:
>
> After a continuous work since January 08, we are very glad to announce  
> our
> first stable version of SqueakDBX.
>
> For those who don't know what this is about, the aim of this project is  
> to
> build an OpenDBX (http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/OpenDBX/)
> wrapper which will allow users to perform relational database operations
> (DDL, DML and SQL) through a truly open source library. Through this
> feature, the squeak community will hopefully be able to interact with  
> major
> database engines, such as Oracle and SQL Server, besides those which are
> open source, like PostgreSQL, MySQL or Sqlite. Moreover, by integrating  
> this
> with GLORP (http://www.glorp.org/), will allow us to generate a complete  
> and
> open source solution to relational data base access.
>
>
> Why did we do squeakDBX?
>
> reeThere are several approaches to persistence in Squeak, some very
> interesting: OODB like Gemstone and magma, image, CouchDB or TokyoT/C,  
> and
> so on. All of this options get sense if you can actually decide the way  
> you
> will persist your objects.
>
> However, this is not something that happens very frequently. FREQUENTLY,  
> the
> client (the one who pays you for making the software) requires you to  
> use a
> particular persistence strategy (RDBMS). Not only that, but also a  
> database
> in particular (like Oracle, MS SQL, and so on). They have lots of  
> reasons:
> they already have license for it, they have support and companies for it,
> they know SQL, they want to do selects, legacy systems, and so on. But
> Squeak only provides drivers for MySQL and PostgreSQL natively, so...  
> what
> would you do in the rest of the cases? move to another language? OK, we
> don't. We want to program systems in Squeak.
>
> If you know about SqueakDBX you can just see changelog here:
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6109; If you don't, you should continue
> reading ;)
>
> SqueakDBX features:
>
> -Cross-platform support: Linux, Windows (using MinGW) and Mac. See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6108
> -Runs on Squeak and Pharo.
> -Mini VM blocks when using FFI (asynchronous queries). See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6060#External%20call%20implementation.
> -Own SqueakDBX plugin (experimental). Ability to easily change the  
> external
> call strategy (FFI or our own plugin).
> -Support for: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, ODBC and SQLite3
> -Transactional concept: begin transaction, commit and rollback. See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6071
> -Mappings from String to specific types in selects. See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6075
> -Special OpenDBX options: multistatements, encryption, compression,  
> paged
> results, MySQL modes, and more. See http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6068
> -Automated database connection ralease (although manual disconnection is
> recommended ;-)
> -Automated results retrieving in order to do another query, after doing a
> query and not iterating ALL results
> -Lots of unit tests that buck up our project ;-) (85 right now). See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6077.
> -Lots of benchmarks and comparison with native drivers (PostgreSQL and
> MySQL). See http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6063.
> -Error handling: Not only errors, but levels associated with an error in
> order to avoid FFI calls (if you get a fatal error, it has no sense to do
> another query and the resources must be free). See
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6076
> -Query timeout (this is very useful for web applications) and page size  
> can
> be set for each query. See http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6069
> -Very completed documentation in wiki and getting started.
> -Code critics and SwaLint were run several times.
> -Good design (at least all the major refactors demonstrated that).
>
> Full documentation, installation and getting started instructions can be
> found at wiki page: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6052 . We spent a lot  
> of
> time in it. It has all the information you may need and is in continuos
> development.
>
> Benchmarks: We have a lot of SqueakDBX benchmarks and also some for  
> native
> squeak drivers (PostgreSQL and MySQL) and SqueakDBX seems to be faster  
> than
> both of them. You can read more here: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6063
>
> Packages can be installed from Universe (3.10) or SqueakMap. Current  
> version
> is 1.0. Sources can be download from SqueakSource
> http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakDBX (it requires FFI installed).
> OpenDBX version: 1.4.
>
> Remember that you can compile OpenDBX by yourself or use precompiled
> binaries. For more information please read:
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6129.
>
> GLORP integration: Actually, this may include two parts:
>
> 1) The integration of GLORP with squeak is completely hardcoded with
> PostgreSQL native driver. Because of this, first we will do a refactor in
> GLORP in order to enable it to support different drivers. We will create  
> a
> PostgreSQL driver with the things that GLORP already has. We invited Alan
> Night to have dinner with us when he came to Argentina. We told him our
> ideas and discuss for a while till we got a first design of this  
> refactor.
> We have already started this part.
> 2) Create a SqueakDBX driver for GLORP just like the one we are planning  
> to
> do for PostgreSQL.
>
> The last squeak port of GLORP is very old and there is nobody to do it. A
> friend of us, Diogenes Moreira, has accepted this job, so, thanks to  
> him, we
> hope to have latest GLORP releases in Squeak.
> You can see our Glorp progress here: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6132
>
>
> Help is always wanted. We would really appreciate if you:
>
> -Give us opinions, comments, ideas, new features, complaints and so on.
> -Tell us if you find a bug.
> -Tell us if you test SqueakDBX with other RDMBS or OS different from the
> ones we tested. Just to know if it works or not :)
>
> If you try SqueakDBX and you write something somewhere like a blog, let  
> us
> know. We have this link: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6131 where we put
> useful links for all the people.
>
> Special thanks to:
>
> -ESUG, for supporting us through Summer of Talk 08;
>
> -To Norbert (author of openDBX) for his help and to all the people who
> tested it and help us.
>
> Cheers,
>
> SqueakDBX team



-- 
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it".  
Albert Einstein