[VPM] ANNOUNCE: Rosetta/SQL-SyntaxModel developer release #1

[Darren Duncan]

2004-08-06   Darren Duncan <perl at DarrenDuncan.net>
--------------------------------------------------

Finally, after 19 months of waiting, since the first notice of this 
project was uploaded to CPAN (2003-01-05), I am pleased to announce 
that the first developer release of my Rosetta database portability 
framework is now availaable.

These following distributions that comprise the framework should 
appear on your favorite CPAN mirrors within the next few hours or 
days:

	* Locale-KeyedText-0.06.tar.gz (Locale::KeyedText v0.06)
	* SQL-SyntaxModel-0.37.tar.gz (SQL::SyntaxModel v0.24)
	* Rosetta-0.32.tar.gz (Rosetta v0.16)
	* Rosetta-Extensions-0.06.tar.gz (various and sundry)

My CPAN maintainer ID is DUNCAND.  (Note that some CPAN testers may 
give Fails by mistake because they don't install/test dependencies 
first.)  In addition to CPAN, you should also find the modules here: 
http://darrenduncan.net/d/perl/ .

These distributions are listed in dependency order, with each one 
being dependant on those above it in the list; at the same time, each 
distribution is independently useful apart from the framework, and 
apart from any distributions that appear below it in the list.  The 
first 3 distributions have zero additional dependencies. 
Rosetta-Extensions has an additional dependency in the DBI module, 
along with various DBD modules of your choice (but only DBD::SQLite 
and DBD::MySQL have been tested so far).

I have labelled this collection a "developer release" because, while 
the included specification documents and code cover a wide and 
complete-looking range of functionality, only a small fraction of 
"real world" functionality has so far been tested and known to work, 
100% (functional: auto-detecting a list of database instances, 
opening a database connection, and closing it).  Other important 
"real world" functionality like standard data definition, data 
manipulation, querying, and schema importing, is "mostly done" but 
requires some glue code and testing.  I expect to have additional 
developer releases up over the next few weeks that have these 
finished and tested.

The reason that this is the first official ANNOUNCE email, despite a 
19 month period involving 64 uploads to CPAN ("release early and 
often"), is that today is the first time that the framework *as a 
whole* delivers some working "real world" functionality.  Until now, 
while component parts have been functional for quite awhile 
(particularly Locale-KeyedText and SQL-SyntaxModel), you would have 
needed to write substantial additional code to actually talk to a 
database; hence I waited.

During the next few weeks, the Rosetta framework should only be 
relevant to early adopters, who would start writing practical code 
against it prior to being able to test that code, or likewise 
figuring it into near future project design plans.  Please download 
and poke at it (the code should be very clean, too).  While it is 
pre-alpha, I would say that the API is fairly stable now; it  and the 
framework's general structure should not be changing greatly, except 
in response to feedback.  Mostly whats left is some implementation 
details.  Now is as good a time as any for potential adopters to 
start looking closely at what it does, how it works, and how or when 
to use it.  This especially includes those people who maintain the 
various "object persistence" modules who yearn to support more than 
one or two databases.  To a lesser extent, it also includes those 
that make DBD modules, since there are potentially some things you 
can do that would make my job easier.

Note that all of my modules are pure Perl 5, but they were also 
designed to be easy to convert into either Parrot assembly / IMC or 
plain C at some time in the future (SQL::SyntaxModel in particular). 
I fully plan to make a Parrot version, in fact, which all 
Parrot-hosted languages can exploit, and do it early.

I welcome any feedback, suggestions, or feature requests that you 
have (including any about the licences), both good or bad, at 
perl at DarrenDuncan.net.  But keep in mind that I already have a list 
of what still needs doing, so you don't have to point out the obvious 
gaps.

Thank you and have a good day. -- Darren Duncan

P.S.  Note that 'Rosetta' (cdpOg) is already registered with the Perl 
5 Module List since 2003-01-21.  I also plan to register 
'Locale::KeyedText' (cdpOl) and 'SQL::SyntaxModel' (cdpOg) there 
soon, following "discussion".  I do not plan to register any other 
associated modules in the near term.

P.P.S.  Any further ANNOUNCE emails will have the more standard 
appearance of just listing deltas from previous releases.  This one 
couldn't, obviously.