========================= Announcing PyTables 2.0b1 =========================
The PyTables development team is very happy to announce the public availability of the first *beta* version of PyTables 2.0. Starting with this release, both the API and the file format have entered in the stage of freezing (i.e. nothing will be modified unless something is clearly *wrong*), so people can use it in order to begin with the migration of their existing PyTables 1.x scripts as well as start enjoying the new exciting features in this major version ;) You can download a source package of the version 2.0b1 with generated PDF and HTML docs from http://www.pytables.org/download/preliminary/ [Starting with the beta phase, and in order to make the life easier for Windows beta-testers, we are delivering binary versions for Win32.] You can also get the latest sources from the Subversion repository at http://pytables.org/svn/pytables/trunk/ If you are afraid of Subversion (you shouldn't), you can always download the latest, daily updated, packed sources from http://www.pytables.org/download/snapshot/ Please have in mind that some sections in the manual can be obsolete (specially the "Optimization tips" chapter). The tutorials chapter is in the process of being updated as well. The reference chapter should be fairly up-to-date though. You may also want to have an in-deep read of the ``RELEASE-NOTES.txt`` file where you will find an entire section devoted to how to migrate your existing PyTables 1.x apps to the 2.0 version. You can find an HTML version of this document at http://www.pytables.org/moin/ReleaseNotes/Release_2.0b1 Changes more in depth ===================== Improvements: - NumPy is finally at the core! That means that PyTables no longer needs numarray in order to operate, although it continues to be supported (as well as Numeric). This also means that you should be able to run PyTables in scenarios combining Python 2.5 and 64-bit platforms (these are a source of problems with numarray/Numeric because they don't support this combination yet). - Most of the operations in PyTables have experimented noticeable speed-ups (sometimes up to 2x, like in regular Python table selections). This is a consequence of both using NumPy internally and a considerable effort in terms of refactorization and optimization of the new code. - Combined conditions are finally supported for in-kernel selections. So, now it is possible to perform complex selections like:: result = [ row['var3'] for row in table.where('(var2 < 20) | (var1 == "sas")') ] or:: complex_cond = '((%s <= col5) & (col2 <= %s)) ' \ '| (sqrt(col1 + 3.1*col2 + col3*col4) > 3)' result = [ row['var3'] for row in table.where(complex_cond % (inf, sup)) ] and run them at full C-speed (or perhaps more, due to the cache-tuned computing kernel of numexpr, which has been integrated into PyTables). - Now, it is possible to get fields of the ``Row`` iterator by specifying their position, or even ranges of positions (extended slicing is supported). For example, you can do:: result = [ row[4] for row in table # fetch field #4 if row[1] < 20 ] result = [ row[:] for row in table # fetch all fields if row['var2'] < 20 ] result = [ row[1::2] for row in # fetch odd fields table.iterrows(2, 3000, 3) ] in addition to the classical:: result = [row['var3'] for row in table.where('var2 < 20')] - ``Row`` has received a new method called ``fetch_all_fields()`` in order to easily retrieve all the fields of a row in situations like:: [row.fetch_all_fields() for row in table.where('column1 < 0.3')] The difference between ``row[:]`` and ``row.fetch_all_fields()`` is that the former will return all the fields as a tuple, while the latter will return the fields in a NumPy void type and should be faster. Choose whatever fits better to your needs. - Now, all data that is read from disk is converted, if necessary, to the native byteorder of the hosting machine (before, this only happened with ``Table`` objects). This should help to accelerate apps that have to do computations with data generated in platforms with a byteorder different than the user machine. - The modification of values in ``*Array`` objects (through __setitem__) now doesn't make a copy of the value in the case that the shape of the value passed is the same as the slice to be overwritten. This results in considerable memory savings when you are modifying disk objects with big array values. - All the leaf constructors have received a new parameter called ``byteorder`` that lets the user specify the byteorder of their data *on disk*. This effectively allows to create datasets in other byteorders than the native platform. - Native HDF5 datasets with ``H5T_ARRAY`` datatypes are fully supported for reading now. - The test suites for the different packages are installed now, so you don't need a copy of the PyTables sources to run the tests. Besides, you can run the test suite from the Python console by using:: >>> tables.tests() Bug fixes: - As mentioned above, the fact that NumPy is at the core makes that certain bizarre interactions between numarray and NumPy scalars don't affect the behaviour of table selections anymore. Fixes http://www.pytables.org/trac/ticket/29. - Did I mention that PyTables 2.0 can be safely used in 64-bit platforms in combination with Python 2.5? ;) Deprecated features: - Not many, really. Please see ``RELEASE-NOTES.txt`` file. Backward-incompatible changes: - Many. Please see ``RELEASE-NOTES.txt`` file. Important note for Windows users ================================ In order to keep PyTables happy, you will need to get the HDF5 library compiled for MSVC 7.1, aka .NET 2003. It can be found at ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/current/bin/windows/5-165-win-net.ZIP Please remember that, from PyTables 2.0 on, Python 2.3 (and lesser) is not supported anymore. What is PyTables? ================= **PyTables** is a package for managing hierarchical datasets and designed to efficiently cope with extremely large amounts of data (with support for full 64-bit file addressing). It features an object-oriented interface that, combined with C extensions for the performance-critical parts of the code, makes it a very easy-to-use tool for high performance data storage and retrieval. PyTables runs on top of the HDF5 library and NumPy package (but numarray and Numeric are also supported) for achieving maximum throughput and convenient use. Besides, PyTables I/O for table objects is buffered, implemented in C and carefully tuned so that you can reach much better performance with PyTables than with your own home-grown wrappings to the HDF5 library. PyTables Pro sports indexing capabilities as well, allowing selections in tables exceeding one billion of rows in just seconds. Platforms ========= This version has been extensively checked on quite a few platforms, like Linux on Intel32 (Pentium), Win on Intel32 (Pentium), Linux on Intel64 (Itanium2), FreeBSD on AMD64 (Opteron), Linux on PowerPC (and PowerPC64) and MacOSX on PowerPC. For other platforms, chances are that the code can be easily compiled and run without further issues. Please contact us in case you are experiencing problems. Resources ========= Go to the PyTables web site for more details: http://www.pytables.org About the HDF5 library: http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5/ About NumPy: http://numpy.scipy.org/ To know more about the company behind the development of PyTables, see: http://www.carabos.com/ Acknowledgments =============== Thanks to various 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! Share your experience ===================== Let us know of any bugs, suggestions, gripes, kudos, etc. you may have. ---- **Enjoy data!** -- The PyTables Team -- >0,0< Francesc Altet http://www.carabos.com/ V V Cárabos Coop. V. Enjoy Data "-" -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list Support the Python Software Foundation: http://www.python.org/psf/donations.html