ANN: MetaKit 2.0 open source embedded database

[Jean-Claude Wippler]

This announcement marks the release of MetaKit as open source.

MetaKit is an efficient database library with a small footprint.
It's a cross between flat-file, relational databases, and OODBMS.
Keywords: structured storage, transacted commit, load on-demand,
portable, C++, Python, Tcl, scripting, instant schema evolution.

RELEASE NOTES:  The new release is nearly identical to the recent
1.9 release, with a few minor tweaks, and updated documentation.
The change is that source code is now freely available to anyone.

License: X/MIT-style open source.  Commercial support is provided
though an Enterprise License from Equi4 Software, see the website.

MetaKit 2.0 embodies the evolution of 3 years of development and
production use, and is considered a pretty stable release.  Both
the Python and the Tcl extension interfaces have been adjusted to
use the new 2.0 release number, and are now part of the core.

The MetaKit home page is at:  http://www.equi4.com/metakit/  with
links to documentation, source code, all license details, mailing
lists (moved), defect tracking (new), and a CVS repository (new).
The new services are hosted on the SourceForge Open Source site.

Binary builds of this library are currently available by FTP for:
Unix (AIX, Digital Unix, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris), Windows (9X/NT),
and Macintosh (PPC).  Older release builds are available for VMS,
BeOS, SGI, and a few others (all the way down to 16-bit MS-DOS).

Both old and new releases remain 100% supported by yours truly.
The bug database is there to report problems, and CVS is there to
get fixes and patches back out to everyone - so let's use them!

As the 2.0 version number indicates, this also marks the start of
a new range of MetaKit releases.  Having successfully proven the
concepts that underpin MetaKit over the last several years, it is
time to open up the system to all developers who are interested
in simplicity and raw performance.  Over the coming months, I'll
be making a substantial number of new contributions, while at the
same time inviting every interested developer to discuss ideas to
make MetaKit even faster, more scalable, multi-user / -threading,
and binding it to many more languages and platforms.  If there is
a need, separate "stable" & "bleeding-edge" areas will be set up.

The website, code, and documentation are currently being adjusted
to iron out all wrinkles of these changes.  Hello, DBMS world :)

-- Jean-Claude Wippler <jcw at equi4.com>