[eGenix.com] ANN: eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package 2.0.4

[egenix-announcements@lists.egenix.com]

________________________________________________________________________

ANNOUNCING:

             eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package for Python
                             Version 2.0.4

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


________________________________________________________________________

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.

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT'S NEW ?

The RPM packages were updated to install to /usr/ instead
of /usr/local/ to comply with the Linux Standard Base (LSB)
and to be compatible with the Python RPMs which are available
from python.org.

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.

________________________________________________________________________

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/).

________________________________________________________________________

WHERE CAN I GET IT ?

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

      http://www.egenix.com/

________________________________________________________________________

WHAT DOES IT COST ?

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


________________________________________________________________________

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.

________________________________________________________________________


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