[PHP-DEV] Metabase release of 2000-04-28 From: Manuel Lemos (mlemos <email protected>)
Date: 04/29/00

Hello,

For those that don't know, there is a new release of Metabase. A summary
of changes follows below.

http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/browse.html/package/20

The most important addition in this release is a driver class conformance
test suite. This consists of a script that uses a test database to preform
some tests with the driver classes to verify if they are working as
expected.

This is very important to assure the quality of the driver classes that
Metabase users may use. With this driver conformance test suite developers
have now a good tool to develop and debug Metabase driver classes.
Fortunately, this test suite made possible to find not so easy to detect
bugs in several drivers. Look in the updated manual document for more
details.

Currently, the only driver class that needs further development is the ODBC
driver. With the addition of ODBC driver query capabilities functions in
PHP 4, there are now conditions to complete the development of a good
Metabase ODBC driver.

Besides the existing drivers, I would like to hear from you which other
drivers you would like to see in Metabase. A Sybase driver is planned for
an upcoming release.

There are also plans for a proxy driver that would work similarly to Perl
DBI proxy driver. A driver like this would solve the problems that many
PHP developers face when trying to access database servers that are running
in remote machines and for some reason there is difficulty to reach those
databases servers with the client libraries that PHP uses.

Planned features include optional on-fly data compression and encryption
tunneling to make the distante remote database connections work faster and
safer without requiring and underlying VPN. The implementation of this
driver is pending on the enabling of socket listening support that was
added to PHP 4 but it was disabled meanwhile.

Other than this, if you would like very much to have a particular driver
class that doesn't exist in Metabase, just let me know.

Pierre-henri Delaval has been working on an Informix driver. If you would
like to develop any other driver yourself, feel free to ask for any
assistance. Just let me know to avoid potential duplicate work.

One final request, if you have been using and enjoying Metabase, please go
to Zend web site and vote for Metabase. That will contribute to make
Metabase more aware among the PHP community and ultimately will contribute
to bring in more developers that can help to developer more and better
drivers to serve better the PHP users that need database abstraction
package like this. Here's the Zend web site page for Metabase:

http://www.zend.com/apps.php?id=122&single=1

Thank you,
Manuel Lemos

Metabase 2000.04.28 summary of changes:

- Added driver class conformance test suite.
- Fixed several driver class bugs spotted by the conformance test suite.
- Added a native driver class to interface with Microsoft SQL server.
- Improved debug output capture capabilities.
- Improved the clarity of several error messages.
- Several other minor bug fixes.

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: email protected>?subject=Re:%20[PHP-DEV]%20Metabase%20release%20of%202000-04-28&replyto=3289.154T2366T1335847mlemos <email protected>">mlemos <email protected>">http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos <email protected> 

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