________________________________________________________________________ ANNOUNCING: eGenix.com mx Extension Series for Python Version 2.0.0 Full Source Python extensions providing important and useful services for Python programmers. ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT IS IT ? The eGenix.com mx Extensions for Python are a collection of professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability in many important areas such as ODBC database connectivity, fast text processing, date/time processing and web site programming. Python is an open-oriented Open Source programming language which runs on all modern platforms. By integrating ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming platform for todays IT challenges. The tools have a proven record of being portable across many Unix and Windows platforms, e.g. you can write applications which use an ODBC database on Windows which then run on Unix platforms without change due to the consistent platforms independent interfaces. All available packages have proven their stability and usefulness in many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all around the world. The two most well-known subpackages from the eGenix.com 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 ? mxODBC, mxDateTime and all other mx packages are now maintained by my new company eGenix.com Software GmbH, Langenfeld in Germany (http://www.egenix.com/). This move will provide a better base for future development and also assures the availability of commercial support, which is important for companies building applications based on the eGenix.com mx Extensions. The new versions of the eGenix.com mx Extensions use the Python 2.0 distutils packaging technology to simplify installation and use of the many different subpackages. This is expected to greatly enhance the installation and usage experience of the software. In additions to many subpackage enhancements, this new release repackages all mx Extensions under a new top-level package named 'mx'. This will allow you to use the subpackages side-by-side with other Python tools using similar names. The software is now delivered in two download archives: the eGenix.com mx BASE package which holds all the Open Source tools from the series and provides the basis for the other add-ons and the eGenix.com mx COMMERCIAL package which currently only contains the mxODBC package. The two packages are covered by the eGenix.com Public License and the eGenix.com Commercial License respectively. Details about the licenses can be found at: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/mxLicense.html ________________________________________________________________________ SPECIAL OFFER theKompany.com has licensed the COMMERCIAL package (which includes mxODBC) for inclusion in their brand new Qt-based Python IDE BackAdder. It allows developing portable GUI-based database applications which run on Windows and Linux platforms without any change to the source code. BlackAdder includes a 1 CPU license for this package at no extra cost, so you may want to check out their great new product. See http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#BlackAdder for details. ________________________________________________________________________ EGENIX.COM MX BASE 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). 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. 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. mxBeeBase - On-disk B+Tree Based Database Kit mxBeeBase is a high performance construction kit for disk based indexed databases. It offers components which you can plug together to easily build your own custom mid-sized databases (the current size limit is <CODE>sizeof(long)</CODE> which gives you an address range of around 2GB on 32-bit platforms). The two basic building blocks in mxBeeBase are storage and index. Storage is implemented as variable record length data storage with integrated data protection features, automatic data recovery and locking for multi process access. Indexes use a high performance optimized B+Tree implementation built on top of Thomas Niemann's Cookbook B+Tree implementation (http://epaperpress.com/). Note: mxBeeBase is new in this release and still in beta. ________________________________________________________________________ EGENIX.COM MX COMMERCIAL PACKAGE OVERVIEW: 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. ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET IT ? The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can be found at: http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/ ________________________________________________________________________ WHAT DOES IT COST ? The BASE packages come with a Python 2.0 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 new licenses which allows non-commercial use at no charge, but costs a moderate fee for commercial use. Please see http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#mxCOMMERCIAL for details. ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ? Commercial quality support for these packages is available from eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support for details about the eGenix support offerings. ________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCE: <P><A HREF="http://www.lemburg.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx Extension Series</A> - eGenix.com mx Extension Series with distutils support and precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux. (22-Feb-2001) ________________________________________________________________________ ...thanks for reading this far ;-) In the spirit of Python software announcements, I am leaving off for the Python Conference in Long Beach, California tomorrow. If you have any problems with these packages or the downloads, please email me at mal@egenix.com. I will read your mail once I get back from the conference and will do my best make the eGenix.com mx Extensions a success for you. See you at the conference, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Company & Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/