________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING: mx Extension Series for Python 2.0 Full Source Python extensions providing important and useful services for Python programmers. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT IS IT ?: The mx Extension Series is a collection of Python software packages which aims at providing professional quality add-ons for the Open Source Language Python (see http://www.python.org). All of the available packages are proven in every day use and fullfil mission critical jobs in various commercial settings all around the world. The two most well-known packages from the mx Extension Series are mxDateTime and mxODBC providing date/time services and professional ODBC database connectivity on practically all supported Python platforms. These two packages enable database software which is portable not only across platforms, but also across database backends. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT'S NEW ? The new download archives now all include binaries for Windows platforms which were compiled against Python 2.0. This means that installing the extensions on Windows boils down to unzipping the archives into C:\Python20\Lib. Versions for Python 1.5.2 are still available too. More packages and updated versions of the existing packages will be published in the first quarter 2001. All mx Extension Series packages will then move under a new top-level package named "mx". ________________________________________________________________________ PACKAGE OVERVIEW: mxDateTime - Generic Date/Time Types mxDateTime is an extension package that provides three new object types, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let you store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way than by using ticks (seconds since 1.1.70 0:00 UTC; the encoding used by the time module). You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and copy them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks and some other more esoteric values. In addition, there are several convenient constructors and formatters at hand to greatly simplify dealing with dates and times in real-world applications. In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the package also exports a comfortable C API interface for other extensions to build upon. This is especially interesting for database applications which often have to deal with date/time values (the mxODBC package is one example of an extension using this interface). mxODBC - Generic ODBC 2.0 interface mxODBC is an extension package that provides a Python Database API compliant interface to ODBC 2.0 capable database drivers and managers. In addition to the capabilities provided through the standard DB API it also gives access to a rich set of catalog methods which allow you to scan the database for tables, procedures, etc. Furthermore, it uses the mxDateTime package for date/time value interfacing eliminating most of the problems these types normally introduce (other in/output formats are available too). The latest version of the interface allows you to interface to more than one database from one process. It includes a varity of preconfigured setups for many commonly used databases such as MySQL, Oracle, Informix, Solid and many more. A precompiled version of the extension for use with the Windows ODBC manager is also included. mxTextTools - Fast Text Processing Tools mxTextTools is an extension package for Python that provides several useful functions and types that implement high-performance text manipulation and searching algorithms in addition to a very flexible and extendable state machine, the Tagging Engine, that allows scanning and processing text based on low-level byte-code "programs" written using Python tuples. It gives you access to the speed of C without the need to do any compile and link steps every time you change the parsing description. Applications include parsing structured text, finding and extracting text (either exact or using translation tables) and recombining strings to form new text. mxStack - Fast and Memory-Efficient Stack Type mxStack is an extension package that provides a new object type called Stack. It works much like what you would expect from such a type, having .push() and .pop() methods and focusses on obtaining maximum speed at low memory costs. mxTools - Collection of Additional Builtins mxTools is an extension package that includes a collection of handy functions and objects giving additional functionality in form of new builtins to the Python programmer. The package auto-installs the new functions and objects as builtins upon first import. This means that they become instantely available to all other modules without any further action on your part. Add the line import NewBuiltins to your site.py script and they will be available to all users at your site as if they were installed in the Python interpreter itself. mxCrypto - Interface to Eric Young's SSLeay/OpenSSL mxCrypto is an extension package that provides OO-style access to the cipher algorithms and hash functions included in SSLeay, a very nifty cryptographic lib written by Eric Young now maintained by the OpenSSL team. Apart from being usable stand-alone, it provides hooks that make it work as high quality fill-in for the missing parts in Andrew Kuchling's pycrypt export package. Due to the ITAR export restrictions on cryptographic software Andrew's implementations are not legally downloadable from outside the US. SSLeay/OpenSSL is available world-wide. mxProxy - Generic Proxy Wrapper Type mxProxy is an extension package that provides a new type that is suitable to implement Bastion like features without the need to use restricted execution environments. The type's main features are secure data encapsulation (the hidden objects are not accessible from Python since they are stored in internal C structures), customizable attribute lookup methods and a cleanup protocol that helps in breaking circular references prior to object deletion. The latest version adds a very interesting new feature: weak references which help you work with circular references in a way that doesn't cause memory leakage in a Python system. ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET IT ? The download archives, full documentation and instructions for installing the packages can be found at: http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/mxExtensions.html ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT DOES IT COST ? Most packages come with a Python-style license, which means that you can use them in both commercial and non-commercial settings without fee or charge. All packages come with full source code. mxODBC comes with a license comparable to the old MySQL license: it is only free for in-house use. If you use it in consulting work or otherwise redistribute it in a commercial setting, you will have to get a commercial license. More information about mxODBC licensing is available at: http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/mxODBC-License.html The next version of mxODBC will be made available as shareware in order to support further development of the software (including full Unicode support, support for ODBC 3.5 data types and special hooks for vendor specific ODBC extensions such as binding to files). ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ? Commercial support for these packages will be available from eGenix.com Software starting in January 2001. If you'd like more information about this service, contact the eGenix.com helpdesk at info@egenix.com . ________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCE: <P><A HREF="http://starship.python.net/~lemburg/mxExtensions.html> mx Extension Series for Python 2.0</A> - mx Extension Series for Python 2.0. (01-Nov-2000) -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/