ODABA Releases TODBMS and Tools 10.0.1

The latest version of the Terminology-Oriented Database Management System (TODBMS) ODABA has been released on Monday, 04. October 2010.

Besides removing several bugs, user assistance has been improved. Highlights include pre-release of the ODABA GUI framework and the starter guide lines 9 steps to develop a GUI application. Design patterns provide powerful assistance for building GUI applications.

New tools as OptionBrowser have been provided in order help developers setting proper options when running the tools. Database initialization for new development databases has been improved. The ODABA API has been extended slightly and documentation has been extended.

Details of technical changes are contained in the release log (ReleaseLog_*.txt) that contain detailed conceptual notes about changes or in the change logs (Changes_*.txt), which describe technical changes on source file level. The logs are available at sourceforge (SOURCE tab).

• Detailed changes (ODABA)

  • The interface has been updated, i.e. several bugs have been removed and new functions have been provided. Some function have changed their functionality. More details you will find in ReleaseLog_opa.txt.
  • Run-time options have been updated and documented (see also ODABA-gui online dokumentation: GUI Online Documentation/Reference documentation/ODE options).
  • The schema loader (ODL.exe) has got some new options in order to maintain the production state of a development database.

• Detailed changes (GUI)

  The GUI frame work and ODE tools are still released as pre-release. The can be used, but they are not yet stable.

  • Options have been provided in order to control default action from application environment (disable, hide, set short cut). Common options for running the GUI framework have been provided. An option dialogue/application ( OptionBrowser) allows viewing or setting options for ODE tools, but also for applications.
  • A generic action interface has been provided, which is supported by an ActionBrowser. Generic action support allows configuring ODE tools, but also applications by defining external services (compile, link etc.) via the action interface.

• ODABA Documentation

  An essential part has been added to the online documentation.The 9 steps to develop a GUI application describe by means of a commented example how to

  • Install or build the ODABA software and the GUI framework and ODE tools
  • Define a database schema in ODL or by using ClassEditor
  • Create test data using OSI (ODABA Script Interface)
  • Evaluate test data using OShell
  • Building a GUI application using design patterns

• Plans and Work in Progress

  The next release (version 10.1) will contain a .NET interface and supports C# development. Moreover, the RUN-Software team is working on making more information accessible for causal developers (e.g. more source code documentation, usual documentation sites featuring Doxygen). Many work for the next month is dedicated to the improvement of documentation. Specially, user's guides and practical hints for ODE tools, but also documentation of specific implementation strategies as context programming. Completing the test-suite and fixing problems the community reports to make the next release even more reliable. The next steps are documenting and improving the ODE tools to make them more intuitive and universal.

• Installing ODABA

  ODABA, including applications and libraries, is available for free under Open Source licenses (GPL). ODABA runs on various hardware configurations, operating systems and works on many desktop environments. ODABA can be obtained as source code distribution and in various binary formats from http://sourceforge.net/downloads/odaba/

• Previous Releases

  When running ODABA 11.x.x, no upgrade is necessary. When still using ODABA 10.x.x, resource databases and databases referring to ODABA system data types need to be upgraded. Details about how to call a database upgrade are described in the readme file for the ODABA 11.0.0 installation.

  With this release of ODABA 11.1.0 we declare the end of live for all previous released ODABA versions.

• System Requirements

  In order to get the most out of this release, we recommend to use a recent computer with at least 1GB of memory and and 2 GHz CPU or better. In order to install the binaries, about 100 MB are required. Installing sources requires about 50 MB. 80MB are required in addition, when installing the documentation locally.

• About RUN-Software

  RUN-Software develops database management system ODABA and tools since 1994. Besides general and particular software solutions, RUN-Software publishes theoretical works about database theory and terminology in connection with data modeling.