Dear MacPerl users, I'd like to announce the first public release of my module DBD::DtfSQLmac 0.1201, a Mac DBI driver for the dtF/SQL 2.01 relational database engine. ***DESCRIPTION dtF/SQL is a relational database engine for Mac OS, Windows 95/NT, and several Unix platforms from sLAB Banzhaf & Soltau oHG, Boeblingen, Germany. The dtF/SQL database engine is designed as an embedded database for product developers and implements an impressive set of ANSI SQL-92 functionality. Best of all, it's FREE for non-commercial use. The state of free (or nearly free) relational databases on the Macintosh running classic Mac OS isn't great, thus dtF/SQL is a remarkable exception. Because of the lack of free relational databases, the number of Perl DBI drivers usable for the Macintosh is limited (in fact, there's only a handful). This module should help to alleviate the situation. The module should run on a PowerPC Macintosh with Mac OS 7.x/8.x/9.x right out of the box. Unfortunately, users of a 68K Mac are a bit out of luck, as I cannot provide a pre-build version for them. One will need a Metrowerks Codewarrior compiler and linker to build a version for CFM 68K Macs (see the documentation for more information). ***WHAT YOU WILL NEED MacPerl 5.004 (not 5.6.x) DBI 1.08 (Mac build, visit the Module Porters Page [1]) Mac::DtfSQL 0.1201 (part of the distribution) and the dtF/SQL 2.01 distribution for Macintosh (see below). ***HOW TO GET dtF/SQL 2.01 Downloading dtF/SQL version 2.01 requires registration. Visit sLAB's web site at http://www.slab.de/us/home/, go to the download section and register yourself. Within a few minutes, you will get a user name and password via email. Now, visit their web site again, go straight to the download section, choose 'Non-public Download', enter your user name and password, wait for the file list to come and choose dtF/SQL 2.01 for MacOS dtFmac-201.sit Size: 3395 kByte Date: 09/14/2000 . Then choose "License agreement for non-commercial users", read and agree to the upcoming License Agreement to actually download the file. There are older versions of dtF/SQL available, and some don't require registration. However, this module was written for version 2.01 and will *not* work with older versions of dtF/SQL. With the 2.0 release of the dtF/SQL database engine, its API has been revamped. Within the downloaded package, you will find the shared library (PPC only) needed for the DtfSQLmac driver, as well as the static PPC and 68K (Metrowerks) libraries, the documentation, a tool for administrating a dtF/SQL database (PPC only), the dtF/SQL database server (PPC only), sample source code (in C and C++) and other useful stuff. *** READ ABOUT dtF/SQL There is a MacTech article covering an older (1.6) version of dtF/SQL: "dtF/SQL -- The Little Engine That Could" by William A. Gilbert, MacTech No. 4, Vol. 14 (April 1998) http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.14/14.04/dtF-SQL/index.html You can download the DBD::DtfSQLmac module and the readme from my website via http://usemacperl.webjump.com/dbi.html or direct (but if you are interested in DBI, you should really take a look at the above page) http://usemacperl.webjump.com/downloads/DBD-DtfSQLmac-0.1201.tar.gz (162 KB) http://usemacperl.webjump.com/downloads/DBD-DtfSQLmac-0.1201.readme or from my CPAN directory $CPAN/authors/id/T/TW/TWEGNER/ As I said, this is a first release. It may have bugs, although I have tested it thoroughly. Thus, in case of emergency, be patient and report bugs to the author :-). Enjoy. Best regards, --Thomas [1] http://pudge.net/mmp/ _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
