[eGenix.com ANN] ANN: eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.3

egenix-announcements@lists.egenix.com egenix-announcements@lists.egenix.com
Thu, 20 Dec 2001 22:01:51 +0100


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ANNOUNCING:

            eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package for Python
                            Version 2.0.3

      Open Source Python extensions providing important and useful
                  services for Python programmers.


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WHAT IS IT ?:

The eGenix.com mx BASE Extensions for Python are a collection of
professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability
in many important areas such as fast text searching, date/time
processing and high speed datatypes.

Python is an object-oriented Open Source programming language which
runs on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating
ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity
and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming
platform for todays IT challenges.

The tools have a proven record of being portable across many Unix and
Windows platforms. You can write applications which use the tools on
Windows and then run them on Unix platforms without change due to the
consistent platform independent interfaces.

All available packages have proven their stability and usefulness in
many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all
around the world.

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WHAT'S NEW ?

The packages were updated to work and compile with Python 2.2 in
addition to all the previous versions (Python 1.5.2, 2.0, 2.1.x).

The mxDateTime subpackage was enhanced to support more date/time
string formats in the parser. Several other subpackages have received
minor fixes to achieve even better portability. eGenix.com mx BASE
should compile on all platforms supported by Python and distutils
out-of-the-box.

As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for
Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the
package on all other supported platforms.

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EGENIX.COM MX BASE PACKAGE OVERVIEW:

mxDateTime - Generic Date/Time Types

     mxDateTime is an extension package that provides three new object
     types, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let
     you store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way
     than by using ticks (seconds since 1.1.70 0:00 UTC; the encoding
     used by the time module).

     You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and
     copy them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks
     and some other more esoteric values. In addition, there are
     several convenient constructors and formatters at hand to greatly
     simplify dealing with dates and times in real-world applications.

     In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the
     package also exports a comfortable C API interface for other
     extensions to build upon. This is especially interesting for
     database applications which often have to deal with date/time
     values (the mxODBC package is one example of an extension using
     this interface).

mxTextTools - Fast Text Processing Tools

     mxTextTools is an extension package for Python that provides
     several useful functions and types that implement
     high-performance text manipulation and searching algorithms in
     addition to a very flexible and extendable state machine, the
     Tagging Engine, that allows scanning and processing text based on
     low-level byte-code "programs" written using Python tuples. It
     gives you access to the speed of C without the need to do any
     compile and link steps every time you change the parsing
     description.

     Applications include parsing structured text, finding and
     extracting text (either exact or using translation tables) and
     recombining strings to form new text.

mxStack - Fast and Memory-Efficient Stack Type

     mxStack is an extension package that provides a new object type
     called Stack. It works much like what you would expect from such
     a type, having .push() and .pop() methods and focusses on
     obtaining maximum speed at low memory costs.

mxTools - Collection of Additional Builtins

     mxTools is an extension package that includes a collection of
     handy functions and objects giving additional functionality in
     form of new builtins to the Python programmer.

     The package auto-installs the new functions and objects as
     builtins upon first import. This means that they become
     instantely available to all other modules without any further
     action on your part. Add the line import NewBuiltins to your
     site.py script and they will be available to all users at your
     site as if they were installed in the Python interpreter itself.

mxProxy - Generic Proxy Wrapper Type

     mxProxy is an extension package that provides a new type that is
     suitable to implement Bastion like features without the need to
     use restricted execution environments.

     The type's main features are secure data encapsulation (the
     hidden objects are not accessible from Python since they are
     stored in internal C structures), customizable attribute lookup
     methods and a cleanup protocol that helps in breaking circular
     references prior to object deletion.

     The latest version adds a very interesting new feature: weak
     references which help you work with circular references in a way
     that doesn't cause memory leakage in a Python system. Note that
     even though Python 2.1+ has its own weak reference implemetation,
     this package can be used to write applications which also work on
     Python 1.5.2 and 2.0.

mxBeeBase - On-disk B+Tree Based Database Kit

     mxBeeBase is a high performance construction kit for disk based
     indexed databases. It offers components which you can plug
     together to easily build your own custom mid-sized databases (the
     current size limit is sizeof(long) which gives you an address
     range of around 2GB on 32-bit platforms).
 
     The two basic building blocks in mxBeeBase are storage and
     index. Storage is implemented as variable record length data
     storage with integrated data protection features, automatic data
     recovery and locking for multi process access. Indexes use a high
     performance optimized B+Tree implementation built on top of
     Thomas Niemann's Cookbook B+Tree implementation
     (http://epaperpress.com/).

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WHERE CAN I GET IT ?

The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can
be found at:

     http://www.egenix.com/files/python/

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WHAT DOES IT COST ?

The BASE packages come with a Python 2.0 style license, which means
that you can use them in both commercial and non-commercial settings
without fee or charge. All packages come with full source code.


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WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ?

Commercial quality support for these packages is available from
eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see

http://www.egenix.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support 

for details about the eGenix support offerings.

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REFERENCE:

<P><A HREF="http://www.egenix.com/files/python/">eGenix.com mx BASE
Extension Package 2.0.3</A> - eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package
2.0.3 with precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux. (20-Dec-2001)

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Enjoy,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                   http://www.egenix.com/files/python/