Background: In about 1989 I created a version of Tim Budd's little smalltalk that promoted the entire Object space/VM and all it contained to a first class Smalltalk object.  I modified it to support message passing between VMs by allowing messages to be serialized.  Eventually (about 1991 before Java and OLE) I abandoned this and rolled my own C-based version for Mac, PC, VMS and Unix (Sun & SCO) that allowed serialized message passing via TCP.  We did this for a kind of object-based ODBC (Oracle, Informix) we called DataStreams which we sold as a product.  DataStreams had abstract (but by this time no longer smalltalk) objects for databases, records, fields, transactions, etc.

I (www.think121.com) am currently looking to bring the same kind of object-based database access to the graphic arts world.  We build commercial (yes, I'm sure that's offensive to some, but I have 4 kids to feed) software for high-speed manipulation of PDF files under database control.  The software (C++) runs on multiple platforms (PC, OS X, Mac, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX), but is currently a simple .EXE and Acrobat plug-in. We have OEM's and customers world-wide. 

I am looking to transform something like Squeak into a simple, vendor-neutral database access layer, a unified, cross-platform UI, and a weapons-grade deployment platform to plug our products into.  We probably would, at most, only want to sell support for the Squeak components.

Over the last n years I have rejected Java (as lame and slow) and lisp as requiring too much effort to port the compiler, etc. Most other stuff is either under some form of GPL (GNU Smalltalk) or is just not real (for example, a squeak XML parser appears to be about as fast as our C++ parser on large 3Mb+ XML files; files which most Java and Microsoft tools can't even open.)  Though I am new to Squeak, it so far looks like an extremely robust platform that is also business friendly.  

I have some serious questions...

1) Are there many other commercially sold (non-smalltalk-programming) apps using Squeak as a base? 

2) It looks like there is no good way to access a database from Squeak (probably ODBC).  Is this true?  I am also interested in integrating database access into a Wiki.  I thought I saw something about Squeak and MySQL, but I couldn't find it.

3) I am interested in creating a mechanism (that remains legally open like Squeak) to allow integrating GhostScript output into Squeak (.PS/.PDF -> Morphic bitmaps).  Does anyone else care?

4) It looks like the Squeak license would require us to turn over all classes we created back to squeak.org, which is okay.  We would probably deploy our proprietary software components as VM plug-ins.  Are there any other such commercial plug-ins?  It looks like this plug-in approach would not violate the license???

5) Does Squeak support real-time, network-based message passing between running Squeaks?

6) What's the best documentation for Squeak (if any)?

Thanks
Comments, flames and death threats to the list or todd at think121.com

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