ANN: PyTables 2.1rc1 ready for testing

[Francesc Alted]

============================
 Announcing PyTables 2.1rc1
============================

PyTables is a library for managing hierarchical datasets and designed to
efficiently cope with extremely large amounts of data with support for
full 64-bit file addressing.  PyTables runs on top of the HDF5 library
and NumPy package for achieving maximum throughput and convenient use.

In PyTables 2.1rc1 many new features and a handful of bugs have been
addressed.  This is a release candidate, so, in addition to the tarball,
binaries for Windows are provided too.  Also, the API has been frozen
and you should only expect bug fixes and documentation improvements for
2.1 final (due to release in a couple of weeks now).

This version introduces important improvements, like much faster node
opening, creation or navigation, a file-based way to fine-tune the
different PyTables parameters (fully documented now in a new appendix of
the UG) and support for multidimensional atoms in EArray/CArray objects.

Regarding the Pro edition, 3 different kind of indexes have been added
so that the user can choose the best for her needs.  Also, and due to
the introduction of the concept of chunkmaps in OPSI, the responsiveness
of complex queries with low selectivity has improved quite a lot.  And
last but not least, it is possible now to sort completely tables that
are ordered by a specific field, with no practical limit in size (up to
2**48 rows, that is, around 281 trillion of rows).  More info in:
http://www.pytables.org/moin/PyTablesPro#WhatisnewinforthcomingPyTablesPro2.1

In case you want to know more in detail what has changed in this
version, have a look at ``RELEASE_NOTES.txt`` in the tarball.  Find the
HTML version for this document at:
http://www.pytables.org/moin/ReleaseNotes/Release_2.1rc1

You can download a source package of the version 2.1rc1 with
generated PDF and HTML docs and binaries for Windows from
http://www.pytables.org/download/preliminary

Finally, and for the first time, an evaluation version for PyTables Pro
has been made available in:
http://www.pytables.org/download/evaluation
Please read the evaluation license for terms of use of this version:
http://www.pytables.org/moin/PyTablesProEvaluationLicense

For an on-line version of the manual, visit:
http://www.pytables.org/docs/manual-2.1rc1


Resources
=========

Go to the PyTables web site for more details:

http://www.pytables.org

About the HDF5 library:

http://hdfgroup.org/HDF5/

About NumPy:

http://numpy.scipy.org/

Acknowledgments
===============

Thanks to many users who provided feature improvements, patches, bug
reports, support and suggestions.  See the ``THANKS`` file in the
distribution package for a (incomplete) list of contributors.  Many
thanks also to SourceForge who have helped to make and distribute this
package!  And last, but not least thanks a lot to the HDF5 and NumPy
(and numarray!) makers. Without them PyTables simply would not exist.

Share your experience
=====================

Let us know of any bugs, suggestions, gripes, kudos, etc. you may
have.

----

  **Enjoy data!**

  -- The PyTables Team
-- 
Francesc Alted