[Seaside] GOODS Object Database Interface

[Avi Bryant]

So, I'd like to (in this limited forum anyway) announce the availability
of a preliminary Squeak interface to Konstantin Knizhnik's GOODS object
database (http://www.ispras.ru/~knizhnik/goods.html); at the same time,
I'd like to put out a request to any experienced database folk who are
interested in helping with it.

The protocol is fully implemented, and there's a quite complete
serialization/metadata layer which loads and stores objects either
transparently in a squeak-only format, or when given some static type
information, in a format byte-compatible with the Java GOODS API.
However, I am somewhat out of my depth when it comes to providing a good
transaction layer, and so that code is currently very rough.  I
will continue to work on it, but I thought I'd also open the code in the
hopes that someone more experienced than I will have some advice on a
good locking interface, reasonable ways of handling commit failures, etc.

Hopefully this should provide a reasonable answer to those looking for a
persistence solution to use with Seaside, at least until Cees writes us
Seashell ;-).

More information and a changeset is available on the Seaside
swiki at http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/sea/20.  I should point out
that this is nowhere near as well documented as it should be, so please
ask lots of questions...

Cheers,
Avi