SqueakDBX: beta release for OpenDBX plugin

A team of students from UTN (National Technological University in Argentina) co-ordinated by Estaban Lorenzano has just announced the first beta release of SqueakDBX, a package to allow Squeak to access OpenDBX functionality, so allowing users to perform relational database operations (DDL, DML and SQL) through a truly open source library. OpenDBX can interact with major database engines such as Oracle and MSSQL besides open source databases such as Postgresql and MySQL. SqueakDBX can also integrate with GLORP.

From the release notes, the key features for this release are:

• Tested on 3.10 and Pharo.
• Support for Linux and OSX.
• Proved on windows (through MinGW), but some changes in OpenDBX are still needed (next version will have full compatibility).
• Tested on PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle.
• MS SQL Server, Firebird, Interbase, SQLite, SQLite3 and Sybase tests will be available as soon as possible.
• Transactional management.
• Automatic conversion of resultset columns (a String) into squeak types.
• Large objects (clob, blob, arrays, and so on) are not yet supported.
• Special OpenDBX options: multi-statments, compression, paged results.
• Automated database connection release on garbage collection (although manual disconnection is recommended)
• Error handling

Some benchmark testing has been carried out, and the performance of the drivers appears to be comparable with native drivers.

The team are very keen to get feedback, bug reports, experiences on different platforms etc, and welcome any contributions. Sources can be download from SqueakSource (it requires FFI installed). Full documentation, installation and getting started instructions can be found at the SqueakDBX wiki page.

This project has been selected as part of ESUG SummerTalk 2008. 

Information source: http://news.squeak.org.

More information in the track in the ClubSmalltalk Spanish Group