Announcement ... SQLClient for GNUstep

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

An initial version of theSQLClient library is now available.

What is the SQLClient library?

The SQLClient library is designed to provide a simple interface to SQL 
databases for GNUstep applications. It does not attempt the sort of 
abstraction provided by the much more sophisticated GDL2 library, but 
rather allows applications to directly execute SQL queries and 
statements.

The major features of the SQLClient library are -

    * Simple API for executing queries and statements... a variable 
length sequence of comma separated strings and other objects (NSNumber, 
NSDate, NSData) are concatenated into a single SQL statement and 
executed.
    * Support multiple sumultaneous named connections to a database 
server in a thread-safe manner.
    * Support multiple simultaneous connections to different database 
servers with backend driver bundles loaded for different database 
engines. Clear, simple subclassing of the abstract base class to enable 
easy implementation of new backend bundles.
    * Configuration for all connections held in one place and 
referenced by connection name for ease of configuration control. 
Changes via NSUserDefaults can even allow reconfiguration of client 
instances within a running application.
    * Thread safe operation... The base class supports locking such 
that a single instance can be shared between multiple threads.

What backend bundles are available?

Current backend bundles are -

    * ECPG - a bundle using the embedded SQL interface for postgres.
      This is based on a similar code which has been in production use 
for over eighteen months, so it should be reliable.
    * Postgres - a bundle using the libpq native interface for postgres.
      This is the preferred backend as it allows 'SELECT FOR UPDATE', 
which the ECPG backend cannot support due to limitations in the 
postgres implementation of cursors. The code is however not as well 
tested as the ECPG interface.
    * MySQL - a bundle using the mysqlclient library for *recent* MySQL.
      I don't use MySQL... but the test program ran successfully with a 
vanilla install of the MySQL packages for recent Debian unstable.
    * Oracle - a bundle using embedded SQL for Oracle.
      Completely untested... may even need some work to compile... but 
this *is* based on code which was working about a year ago.
      No support for BLOBs yet.

Where can you get it? How can you install it?

The SQLClient library is currently only available via CVS from the 
GNUstep CVS repository.
See <https://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=gnustep>
You need to check out gnustep/dev-libs/SQLClient

To build this library you must have a basic GNUstep environment set 
up...

    * The gnustep-make package must have been built and installed.
    * The gnustep-base package must have been built and installed.
    * You must hace sourced the GNUstep.sh script (from gnustep-make) 
to set up environment variables needed for building this.
    * If this environment is in place, all you should need to do is run 
'make' to configure and build the library, 'make install' to install 
it.
    * Then you can run the test programs.
    * Your most likely problems are that the configure script may not 
detect the database libraries you want... Please figure out how to 
modify configure.ac so that it will detect the required headers and 
libraries on your system, and supply na patch.

Bug reports, patches, and contributions (eg a backend bundle for a new 
database) should be entered on the GNUstep project page 
<http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?group-gnustep>