Inaugural Issue Of Postgres Online Magazine Available

The inaugural issue of the Postgres Online Magazine is available. The magazine is available in two formats: HTML and PDF

Here is the table of contents

From the Editors
PostgreSQL The Road Behind and Ahead

What's new and upcoming in PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL 8.3 is just around the Corner

PostgreSQL Q & A
Converting from Unix Timestamp to PostgreSQL Timestamp or Date Beginner
Using Distinct ON to return newest order for each customer Intermediate
How to create an index based on a function Intermediate

Basics
The Anatomy of a PostgreSQL - Part 1 Beginner
How does CLUSTER ON improve index performance Intermediate

PL Programming
Language Architecture in PostgreSQL Intermediate

Using PostgreSQL Contribs
PostGIS for geospatial analysis and mapping Intermediate

Application Development
Database Abstraction with Updateable Views Advanced

Product Showcase
Serendipity Blogging Software

A Product of Paragon Corporation

You can read the magazine here: http://www.postgresonline.com/

xTuple Apps 2.3: PostgreSQL-powered Open Source ERP adds Yahoo!, Returns, Job Shop

xTuple, the leader in open source enterprise resource planning software, announced the general availability of version 2.3 of the xTuple Applications, PostBooks and OpenMFG. Featuring more than 200 community-driven enhancements in just three months, version 2.3 adds:

* support for customer returns and service management;

* an expansion of unit of measure options in sales, purchasing, and inventory;

* better support for job shops and engineer-to-order companies;

* the ability to reserve specific product inventory for particular sales orders;

* and a rich XML-powered interface for external ordering systems, including prebuilt order mapping for web stores powered by Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

The xTuple Applications are advanced ERP software solutions built with open source components, such as the PostgreSQL database, the Qt toolkit for C++, and the OpenRPT report writer. The fully integrated packages include Inventory Management, Product Definition and Costing, Work Order Management, Manufacturing, Purchasing, Sales, Shipping and Receiving, Project Management, Sales Analysis, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, a full General Ledger, and Corporate/Customer Relationship Management. Both packages are fully multi-currency, multi-lingual, and support a range of multi-layered taxation structures. The commercial OpenMFG product adds Manufacturing Scheduling, Capacity Planning, and several other advanced features.

"The progress in the product from release to release is amazing," said Ritzo Muntinga, president of Oceanside, California-based ElectroSport Industries. ElectroSport manufactures specialized power accessories for the streetbike, dirtbike and ATV aftermarket, and championed the Sales Order Reservations functionality new in version 2.3. "We're very impressed with the functionality and stability of OpenMFG, and the xTuple team's ability to design new features without making the application overly cluttered or difficult to use."

The xTuple online community is growing by leaps and bounds as well; there have been over 40,000 downloads of the PostBooks software, and the project has catapulted into the Top 10 projects on the SourceForge open source repository (out of 165,000). In addition to product enhancements, the open source community has contributed translations of the applications into French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Turkish - with efforts underway in German, Japanese, and several other languages.

PostBooks is available free of charge under the OSI-approved Common Public Attribution License (CPAL). OpenMFG is available under xTuple's innovative hybrid license, whereby customers and partners have full access to the application source code, and any enhancements made to the product flow back to xTuple for review, quality testing, and possible incorporation into the baseline product. Both PostBooks and OpenMFG run equally well on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers, and are fully internationalized with multi-currency, support for multiple tax structures, and multilingual translation packs maintained by the global open-source community. All this and more, including public discussion forums, blogs, and the community issue/bug tracker, can be found at www.xtuple.org.

About xTuple:
xTuple (formerly OpenMFG) develops next-generation, enterprise-class business process applications powered by open source software such as Linux, PostgreSQL, and Qt. xTuple products, led by its OpenMFG, OpenRPT and new PostBooks applications, give companies better control over operations, increased productivity, and measurable growth across all areas of their businesses-all at a lower cost of ownership. For more information, please visit the company Web site at www.xtuple.com.

Viewalyzer 1.0.2 Released

Viewalyzer is a graphical tool for recompiling Views and all dependent views. Also all Grants on all views will be available after recompiling. Before recompilation a backup will be made. When some unsolvable errors occur during recompilation everything will be “rolled back”. Also an errorlog is written to get informations what has happened. All your originally written DDL’s can be stored in the database and will that way be used during recompilation. You now can use “CREATE VIEW my_view AS SELECT * FROM my_table” and this will be used every time you recompile this view or one that my_view is dependent on.

New Features:

- Documentation available
- Compatibility with postgres 8.0 – 8.2
- Some minor bugs fixed


Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/viewalyzer/
Screen shots here: http://www.consipio.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=48

You need Java 1.6 to run Viewalyzer

IronPython 2.0 Alpha 7 is now available:

IronPython 2.0 Alpha 7 (source and binary) is now available:
IronPython Project Homepage
Release Notes and Download

There’s been numerous changes to IronPython in the past month and a half. Most notably a lot of work has been done to get usage of the ‘yield’ statement compatible with CPython 2.5. There might be a few more changes that need to be made, but by and far IP now adheres to PEP 342. Another notable change brings the code closer to the new hosting API spec they published on the mailing list. The next couple of releases should finish that work.

Zenoss Core 2.1.2 Available

The latest packaged version of Zenoss Core, version 2.1.2 is available for download.

Zenoss Core 2.1.2 is available from: http://www.zenoss.com/download

This is primarily a maintenance release that addresses the following issues:
ZENMODEL

* Fixed MinMaxThreshold escalation always escalating to 5 (2394)
* Fixed Production state error for non-existent devices in the stopProductionStates list. (2404)
* Fixed MinMaxThreshold string values failure (2419)
* Changing device settings from System/Group fails to update deviceSearch catalog (2433)
* Allow for branch DeviceClasses and EventClasses to be added to ZenPacks (2332)
* Fixed T1 interface display speed (2444)

ZENEVENTS

* Made sure "clear" emails/pages are resent if there is a failure sending (2448)
* Device priority not being set on events (2483)

USER INTERFACE

* Made sure that ZenUsers do not lose ZenUser role when changing their password (2350)
* Fixed UnicodeDecodeError (2127)
* Repeat display for alering rules flip-flops "Does not repeat" display (2409)
* Corrected zoom controls malfunction in IE7 (2425)
* Corrected missing Navtool on OS/Filesystems with more than 40 entries. (2174)

DATACOLLECTOR

* Fixed checkCiscoChange method in SnmpClient (2004)
* Do not monitor hard disks with empty IDs (2398)

ZENRRD

* Fixed issue where disabled RRD Thresholds continued to send events (2278)
* Zencommand thresholds now getting proper eventclass (2423)

GRAPHING

* Apply TALES from DataPointGraphPoint to associated ThresholdGraphPoint. (2382)
* Allow TALES to be used within GraphPoint RPNs (2383)

ZENREPORTS

* Corrected typo in memory performance report (2487)

ZENPACKS

* Fixed broken DellDeviceMap condition (2454)
* Fixed broken HPDeviceMap condition (2455)
* HttpMonitor now usesthe user-supplied timeout value in data sources (2482)
* Removed HelloWorldZenPack from the RPM spec file (2342)

ZENOSSINST

* Fixed pyip version of zenping (1881)

Volume 2, Issue 4 of The Python Papers Available For Download

The latest PDF may be downloaded from http://archive.pythonpapers.org/ThePythonPapersVolume2Issue4.pdf. It is their largest issue yet at 81 pages and is chock full of great content.

Table of Contents for Volume 2, Issue 4

Letter from the editor: Page 4
Industry Articles
GrrlCamp: Page 6
News from the Python Software Foundation: Page 9
Interview with Michael Foord: Page 16
Screen Scraping Web Pages: Page 22
Interview with Resolver Systems: Page 24
Eight Tips for Starting with Python: Page 30
Python Events: Page 80
Peer Reviewed Section
Acknowledgment of Reviewers: Page 34
pypk - A Python extension module to handle chemical kinetics in plasma physics modeling: Page 35
The Why and How for Design Patterns: Page 48
Python Switch Statement: Page 58
An Introduction to Test Driven Generation: Page 64

PostgreSQL Maestro 7.12 released (8.3 support and more)

SQL Maestro Group announces the release of PostgreSQL Maestro 7.12, a
powerful Windows GUI solution for PostgreSQL administration and database
development.

http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/maestro/

New features
=================

PostgreSQL 8.3 management extensions:

1. Support for ENUM types has been added. You can create new such types,
edit existing ones and, of course, drop unnecessary types. Also the
corresponding editor has been implemented in the Data Grid (also works for
domains based on ENUM types, domains based on domains based on ENUM types
and so on).

2. Function management: now it is possible to set up the environment for a
function as well as customize its execution cost and estimated number of
rows returned by a set-returning function.

3. Support for XML and UUID types has been implemented.

Other server management extensions:

1. The Rule permission is no longer displayed for PostgreSQL 8.2+ because it
was removed in that release for security reasons.

2. SQL parser now accepts queries with !~~, ~~, ~~* and !~~* operators (SQL
Formatter, View Editor).

Interface improvements:

1. The SQL Generator tool has been implemented. Use this feature to produce
various SQL scripts (CREATE, DROP, SELECT, INSERT, etc) for the selected
object. The result script can be saved to a file, copied to clipboard, and
opened in SQL Editor or SQL Script Editor.

2. Data Grid: the notification pane is now displayed after simple mode
activation (filtering, grouping and sorting features are not supported in
this mode). All the related settings can be customized in the Options
dialog.

3. Data Grid: the Generate Query command has been added to the Table / View
Editor. Use this command to copy current filter conditions to the SQL Editor
window as an SQL query. It is also possible to copy filter condition to
clipboard as WHERE clause using grid's popup menu.

4. Data Grid: now it is possible to encrypt the contents of the selected
cell by the md5 algorithm (the corresponding item has been added to grid's
popup menu).

5. Object editors, SQL Editor, Database Designer, BLOB Viewer and other
database-dependent windows: only connected databases are now displayed in
the drop-down list.

6. Some other minor improvements and corrections.

Full press release:
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/news/company/4706/

Background information:

SQL Maestro Group is engaged in developing complete database admin and
management tools for MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQLite,
Firebird and MaxDB providing the highest performance, scalability and
reliability to meet the requirements of today's database applications.

IronPython Studio Is Now Available From CodePlex

IronPython Studio is a free full IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for the Python programming language. It is based on the existing IronPython example that is included in the VS SDK.IronPython Studio is based on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell runtime (royalty free) and can be installed without requiring any version of Visual Studio.

Get it here: http://www.codeplex.com/IronPythonStudio

Resolver Systems announces the public Beta release of Resolver One: the first Spreadsheet/Python hybrid

Resolver Systems (www.resolversystems.com) today announces the public Beta release of its groundbreaking program, Resolver One, a Rapid Application Development tool for analysing and presenting business data using a familiar spreadsheet interface. Resolver One integrates databases, code and IT-developed components to create powerful and easy-to-use solutions - all using your existing knowledge of spreadsheets. The power and ingenious flexibility of Resolver One comes from the fact that it is fully programmable with Python code. After the success of the private Beta subscription in September 2007 (more than 1,000 sign-ups), Resolver is now planning on an official v1.0 release as early as January 2008.

Today Resolver Systems announces the public beta of Resolver One, a revolutionary improvement in spreadsheet systems. In Resolver One, the spreadsheet is a computer program
“This will change the way businesses think about and use spreadsheets. So many of the problems of the traditional model – poor database integration, and the lack of auditing, iterative analysis, or web-publishing - are solved when you realize that any spreadsheet is, at heart, just a computer program,” said Giles Thomas, CTO and MD of Resolver Systems.

“With this launch,” said Jean Viry-Babel, Head of Sales, “we get the opportunity to get our product into the hands of the 1,000s of people who have expressed an interest since Resolver One was featured on Jon Udell’s blog and Slashdot.”

Resolver One uses the Python programming language which was first released in 1991. Python is an easily learnable and highly expressive language with a rich standard library; it has been successfully used in a wide variety of applications, in businesses and in academia. Its clean syntax allows newcomers to become productive rapidly, while its more sophisticated features and built-in test framework allow experienced developers to build powerful tools which can adapt quickly to changing requirements.

“We’re excited that at last people will be able to develop sophisticated applications, all within a familiar spreadsheet interface,” added Giles Thomas.

About Resolver Systems:

Resolver Systems was founded in 2005 to produce a next generation spreadsheet. The founders, Giles Thomas, Robert Smithson and Patrick Kemmis, had all struggled with the challenges of running multi-million or multi-billion dollar businesses through poorly debugged spreadsheets. Their solution – Resolver One – seamlessly integrates a powerful and flexible programming language and a traditional spreadsheet environment. Already Resolver One has received extensive interest from companies in the financial, medical and academic communities.

Python 3.0 Alpha 2 Has Been Released!

Python 3.0 Alpha 2 Has Been Released!

Get it here: http://python.org/download/releases/3.0/

Whitebeam 1.1.5 released

Whitebeam is an open source web-application server built on PostgreSQL for data storage and the Mozilla SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine for application logic.

Started in 2000 and released as open source in 2001, Whitebeam is a mature product that has been in commercial operation hosting real web applications for over 6 years. Examples of commercial applications :
http://www.whitebeam.org/community/users.rhtm

The latest release (1.1.5) follows several years of continuous development in both performance and functionality. JavaScript bindings are provided to the PostgreSQL database, LibGD for image manipulation, SMTP for email creation, HTTP for SOAP and XML/RPC like applications amongst others.

For those that don't want to write SQL, Whitebeam 'Templates' provide high-level functional abstractions. In addition the templates avoid any possibility of 'SQL injection' security issues common with other web development platforms. Examples of 'templated' functionality include hierarchical tree-like catalogues, session management, contact/membership management and data collections.

Full documentation is available on the Whitebeam web-site
http://www.whitebeam.org

Or from the SourceForge project page :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/whitebeam

Whitebeam runs as an Apache web-server module, either on Apache 1.3, 2.0 or 2.2.

Security fix for vulnerability in Django's internationalization framework.

A fix has been released for a security vulnerability discovered in Django's internationalization framework. The complete details are below, but the executive summary is that you should updated to a fixed version of Django immediately.

You can download them at http://www.djangoproject.com/download/. Those tracking trunk development should "svn update" as soon as possible.

Description of vulnerability
A per-process cache used by Django's internationalization ("i18n") system to store the results of translation lookups for particular values of the HTTP Accept-Language header used the full value of that header as a key. An attacker could take advantage of this by sending repeated requests with extremely large strings in the Accept-Language header, potentially causing a denial of service by filling available memory.

Due to limitations imposed by web server software on the size of HTTP header fields, combined with reasonable limits on the number of requests which may be handled by a single server process over its lifetime, this vulnerability may be difficult to exploit. Additionally, it is only present when the "USE_I18N" setting in Django is "True". Nonetheless, all users of affected versions of Django will be encouraged to update.

Affected versions
Django trunk prior to revision [6608].
Django 0.96
Django 0.95 (including 0.95.1)
Django 0.91
Resolution
New versions of Django containing this fix have been released today which lter this caching mechanism to store shortened, normalized values and to reject improperly-formatted headers.

These versions are called:

Django 0.96.1 (replaces Django 0.96)
Django 0.95.2 (replaces Django 0.95.1)
Django 0.91.1 (replaces Django 0.91.1)
Anyone using a stable Django release should upgrade to one of these point releases immediately. These fixed versions have already been provided to maintainers of Django packages for various OS distributions and should be released shortly.

Anyone tracking Django's trunk development should use Subversion to update to at least revision [6608].

PostgreSQL 8.3 Beta 1 now ready for testing!

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group released the long-awaited
first beta of version 8.3. Thanks to an unprecedented number of new
patches, this version introduces more new and improved features than any
previous one. Of course, more new features means that 8.3 needs more
user testing than any previous version, so we're counting on you to
download it and test it with development versions of your applications.

Among the features in the new version are:

-- Greatly improved performance consistency, through HOT, Load Distributed Checkpoint,
JIT bgwriter, Asynchronous Commit, and other features.
-- TSearch2 full text search integrated into the core code with improved syntax and ease of adding custom dictionaries.
-- SQL:XML syntax.
-- Logging to database-loadable CSV files.
-- Automated rebuilding of cached plans.
-- ENUMs, UUIDs and arrays of complex types.
-- GSSAPI and SSPI authentication support.


See the 8.3 Beta Page (http://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta) formore information on downloads, testing, documentation, and reportingbugs. Get started downloading the beta at:Source code: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v8.3beta1/Win32 Binaries: http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/binary/v8.3beta1/win32/

openSUSE 10.3 is Now Available

Novell today announced the availability of openSUSE® 10.3, the newest version of the award-winning community Linux* distribution. Available for free download or in a convenient packaged retail edition, openSUSE 10.3 provides everything a user needs to get started with Linux. To improve the user experience, openSUSE 10.3 includes a flexible Linux-Windows dual-boot configuration, improved user interface, Microsoft* Office file compatibility with the latest OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, and enhanced multimedia support.

“The openSUSE community continues to deliver innovations and has created a new version of openSUSE that will excite a wide range of computer users,” said Andreas Jaeger, director of the openSUSE project. “OpenSUSE 10.3 provides a stable and state-of-the-art operating system based on Linux kernel 2.6.22, and it contains a large variety of the latest open source applications for desktops, servers and application development.”

Enhancements to openSUSE 10.3 include the newest versions of the GNOME* and KDE desktop environments, including a KDE 4 preview. OpenOffice.org 2.3 makes sharing files with Microsoft Office users easy, and the newest version of AppArmor™ protects the Linux operating system and applications from attacks, viruses and malicious applications. OpenSUSE 10.3 also now includes MP3 support out of the box for Banshee™ and Amarok, which are the default media players in openSUSE. In addition, openSUSE 10.3 offers the latest open source applications for developing applications, setting up a home network and running a Web server, as well as the latest virtualization software such as Xen* 3.1 and VirtualBox 1.5.

Version 10.3 makes openSUSE the first Linux distribution to take full advantage of the “1-Click Install” option, which gives openSUSE 10.3 users easy access to many more software packages residing on the openSUSE Build Service. Contributed by a single openSUSE community member, the one-click install is an example of the value openSUSE's strong community of developers, testers, writers, translators, artists and users bring to the distribution. OpenSUSE 10.3 was created by the openSUSE project, the community initiative sponsored by Novell that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The openSUSE project has more than 54,000 registered members.

Availability and Pricing
OpenSUSE 10.3 is now available for free download at www.opensuse.org. The retail edition of openSUSE 10.3 is available on www.shopnovell.com as well as in select retail locations. It delivers the same packages as the downloadable version on an installable DVD for 32- and 64-bit architectures, and it is accompanied by a second DVD containing a large selection of additional software available at the release date. Also included are a comprehensive user manual and 90 days of installation support, all for a suggested $59.95. For retail locations and more information, visit www.novell.com/products/opensuse/resellers/index.html. For more on openSUSE 10.3 and the openSUSE project, visit www.opensuse.org and news.opensuse.org.

PostgreDAC ver.2.4.0 released

download the PostgresDAC v2.4.0 right now at:
http://microolap.com/products/connectivity/postgresdac/download/

Full list of current changes:
[*] Use 8.2.5 sources and client libraries
[*] TPSQLTools will Commit transaction before VACUUM processing if needed
[*] Now TPSQLDatabase.Execute method supports query parameters and caching
[*] Low level mask comparing routines improved
[*] Exception will be raised instead of MessageDlg call in case if libpq.dll is not found
[*] TPSQLDirectQuery component added
[+] TPSQLDatabase: SelectString and SelectStringDef methods added
[+] TPSQLDatabase.Reset method added
[+] TPSQLDatabase.CancelBackend method added to cancel a backend's current query
[-] Filters didn't work correctly in some cases
[-] "TPSQLTools can't perform Reindex within the current database
if DatabaseName needs quoting" bug fixed
[-] "TPSQLDataset.PSExecuteStatement method fails if used with parameters" bug fixed
[-] "Recordcount function moves cursor to EOF if Filtered is True" bug fixed

psqlODBC 08.02.0500 Released

For details of the changes in this release, please see the notes at:
http://psqlodbc.projects.postgresql.org/release.html

With this release two versions of the driver are provided for Windows;
'PostgreSQL ANSI' which supports single and multibyte applications
through the ANSI ODBC API, and 'PostgreSQL Unicode' which provides
Unicode support through the Unicode ODBC API. On Unix systems, the
driver type may be selected via a configure option. MSDTC is also
supported on Windows, and 64 bit support is now included in the source
code (binaries are not yet available).

psqlODBC may be downloaded from
http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/versions/ in source, Windows
Installer, merge module, and basic zip file formats.

Python: Myths about Indentation

This is the place where to point your friends when they gripe about Python's "significant whitespace". There are even details on how it is parsed, for those who are interested.

http://www.secnetix.de/~olli/Python/block_indentation.hawk

The following is covered:
Whitespace is significant in Python source code.
Python forces me to use a certain indentation style.
You cannot safely mix tabs and spaces in Python.
I just don't like it.
How does the compiler parse the indentation?

SQL Injection Cheat Sheet

What is SQL Injection? From wikipedia: SQL injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed

Here is a nice SQL injection cheat sheet. Currently only for MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, some ORACLE and some PostgreSQL

http://ferruh.mavituna.com/makale/sql-injection-cheatsheet/

Table Of Contents
About SQL Injection Cheat Sheet
Syntax Reference, Sample Attacks and Dirty SQL Injection Tricks

Line Comments
SQL Injection Attack Samples

Inline Comments
Classical Inline Comment SQL Injection Attack Samples
MySQL Version Detection Sample Attacks

Stacking Queries
Language / Database Stacked Query Support Table
About MySQL and PHP
Stacked SQL Injection Attack Samples

If Statements
MySQL If Statement
SQL Server If Statement
If Statement SQL Injection Attack Samples

Using Integers

String Operations
String Concatenation

Strings without Quotes
Hex based SQL Injection Samples

String Modification & Related

Union Injections
UNION – Fixing Language Issues

Bypassing Login Screens

Enabling xp_cmdshell in SQL Server 2005
Other parts are not so well formatted but check out by yourself, drafts, notes and stuff, scroll down and see.

Pydev 1.3.9 Released

Python Development Environment (Python IDE plugin for Eclipse). Features editor, code completion, refactoring, outline view, debugger, and other goodies - check http://pydev.sf.net).


Pydev Release: 1.3.9
--------------------

Major highlights:
-----------------

* Fixed problem when configuring jython
* Patch from paulj: debbugger working with jython 2.2rc2
* Patch from Oskar Heck: debbugger can change globals
* Added action to delete all .pyc / $py.class files
* Added actions to add/remove the pydev configuration from a project (previously, the only way to add a nature was to open a python file within a project).
* Ctrl+Shift+O: When used with a selection will consider lines ending with \ (without selection organizes imports)
* Auto-add "import" string will not be added when adding a space in the case: from xxximport (just after from xxx)
* Templates created with tabs (or spaces indent) are now converted to the indent being used in the editor
* Hide non-pydev projects filter working
* Don't show assignments/imports after if __name__ == '__main__': in outline
* Code-completion: after a completion is requested, pressing '.' will apply that completion (and if it has parameters, they'll not be added).
* Code-completion: when a code-completion is applied with Ctrl pressed (toggle mode), parameters are not added.
* Assign to local variable/attribute handles constants correctly.
* psyco changed for Null object for debug (so, no changes are required to the code if psyco is used while debugging).
* Code-folding annotations won't change places.
* Pydev package explorer will correctly show outline for files if the project root is set as a source folder.
* Pydev package explorer: folders under the pythonpath have a package icon.
* Unittest runner: handles multiple selection.

Python for system administrators

As a system administrator, you run across numerous challenges and problems. Managing users, disk space, processes, devices, and backups can cause many system administrators to lose their hair, good humor, or sanity. Shell scripts can help, but they often have frustrating limitations. This is where a full-featured scripting language, such as Python, can turn a tedious task into an easy and, dare I say it, fun one.

The examples in this article demonstrate different Python features that you can put to practical use. If you work through them, you'll be well on your way to understanding the power of Python.


Read the rest of the article on the IBM site: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-python/?ca=dgr-btw01pythonosadmin&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR

Announcing Design Python Pattern of the Week

David Stanek is promising one of the Gang of Four Patterns a week - check it out here: Announcing Design Python Pattern of the Week

Excuthe me, do you have any widdle wabbits?

A precious little girl walks into a pet shop and asks, "Excuthe me, do you have any widdle wabbits?"

The shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he's on her level, and says, "Do you want a thoft widdle fluffy white wabbit like this one, or a thmart looking bwack wabbit like that one, or one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?"

The little girl blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and whispers ... " I don't weally fink my pet pyfon gives a phuk."

Python 3000 Alpha 1 Released

The first Python 3000 release is out -- Python 3.0a1.

http://python.org/download/releases/3.0/


Excerpts
Python 3000 (a.k.a. "Py3k", and released as Python 3.0) is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed.
This is an ongoing project; the cleanup isn't expected to be complete until 2008. In particular there are plans to reorganize the standard library namespace.
The release plan is to have a series of alpha releases in 2007, beta releases in 2008, and a final release in August 2008. The alpha releases are primarily aimed at developers who want a sneak peek at the new langauge, especially those folks who plan to port their code to Python 3000. The hope is that by the time of the final release, many 3rd party packages will already be available in a 3.0-compatible form.

Jython 2.2 Released

Jython 2.2 is available for download. This is the first production release of Jython in nearly six years,and it contains many new features:

new-style classes
Java List integration
PEP 302 implementation
iterators
generators
__future__ division
support for running on modern JVMs
a new installer
ssl and non-blocking support for socket

Spyrit v0.2 released

Spyrit is a MUSH/MUCK/MOO client written in Python using the Qt toolkit. It aims to be a pleasant, extensible, polished product, and to support all three major platforms.


Spyrit v0.2 is still a few features short of going gold, but should already be usable and pleasant to use.

Version 0.2 implements ANSI format codes rendering, preliminary Telnet negotiation support, SSL encryption where supported, unlimited input history, plus a few minor improvements and speedups.

It also offers experimental binaries for both Windows and Linux. Feedback on those is kindly welcome.

Download it here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66416

Linux Journal Article: At the Forge - First Steps with Django

Linux Journal has a nice article about starting with Django, check it out here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9712

pgAdmin III v1.8.0 Beta 3 released

The third beta version of pgAdmin III v1.8.0. has been released.

pgAdmin is the leading graphical administration and development tool forPostgreSQL, EnterpriseDB and most other PostgreSQL-derived DBMSs. It canbe used on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac and Solaris with servers on anyplatform. For more information, please see the website:http://www.pgadmin.org/

To download the beta, please visit the download page athttp://www.pgadmin.org/download/. In addition to the source code, binarydownloads are currently available for Windows, Mac OS X, Fedora 7 andSlackware Linux.

pyglet 1.0 alpha 2 released

pyglet 1.0 alpha 2 released. This alpha release fixes many bugs, includes a new audio and video implementation, and introduces the pyglet Programming Guide. See the downloads page to grab your copy.

about pyglet
pyglet provides an object-oriented programming interface for developing games and other visually-rich applications for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Some of the features of pyglet are:
No external dependencies or installation requirements. For most application and game requirements, pyglet needs nothing else besides Python, simplifying distribution and installation.
Take advantage of multiple windows and multi-monitor desktops. pyglet allows you to use as many windows as you need, and is fully aware of multi-monitor setups for use with fullscreen games.
Load images, sound, music and video in almost any format. pyglet can optionally use AVbin to play back audio formats such as MP3, OGG/Vorbis and WMA, and video formats such as DivX, MPEG-2, H.264, WMV and Xvid.

pyglet is provided under the BSD open-source license, allowing you to use it for both commerical and other open-source projects with very little restriction.

PyCon-Tech '08 Call for Volunteers

Doug Napoleone is asking for help.

We are looking for help at every level. Even if all you do is edit some
of the wiki pages,
this would be greatly appreciated.We are also looking for any and all feedback
on last years system. This feedback should be limited to the web site software
including the schedule, schedule
handouts, talk proposal system, or something we have not yet thought
of.

Get all the details here: http://pycon.blogspot.com/2007/08/pycon-tech-08-call-for-volunteers.html

SchemaCrawler for PostgreSQL announced

SchemaCrawler is free, open-source, operating system independent, command-line tool that can take human-readable snapshots of the schema and data, for later comparison. Comparisons are done using a standard diff tool. SchemaCrawler outputs details of your schema (tables, views, procedures, and more) in a diff-able plain-text format (text, CSV, or XHTML). SchemaCrawler can also output data (including CLOBs and BLOBs) in the same plain-text formats.

SchemaCrawler Grep is another tool that comes with the SchemaCrawler download. SchemaCrawler Grep that allows you to search for certain column names within the database schema.

SchemaCrawler for PostgreSQL is available at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=148383

The SchemaCrawler website is http://schemacrawler.sourceforge.net/

pgsnmpd version 1.0 released

The pgsnmpd developers are happy to announce the release of pgsnmpdversion 1.0. This version implements RFC 1697 (RDBMS-MIB) for a singleversion 8.x PostgreSQL database. Please see http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pgsnmpd/ for more information.

Help with fixing the last 11 unit tests that are still failing for Python 3000

Guido van Rossum writes:

Please help! Here's the list of failing tests:

test_ctypes: Recently one test started failing again, after Martin changed

PyUnicode_FromStringAndSize() to use UTF8 instead of Latin1.

test_email, test_email_codecs, test_email_renamed: Can someone contact the email-sig and ask for help with these?

test_minidom: Recently started failing again; probably shallow.

test_sqlite: Virgin territory, probably best done by whoever wrote the code or at least someone with time to spare.

test_tarfile: Virgin territory again (but different owner :-).

test_urllib2_localnet, test_urllib2net: I think Jeremy Hylton may be close to fixing these, he's done a lot of work on urllib and httplib.

test_xml_etree_c: Virgin territory again.


Get all the details here: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=211842

WPF Designer and the IronPython Integration Sample

If you've had the opportunity to work with WPF/.NET 3.0 yet, you've likely run into the x:Class attribute in XAML. If you specify a x:Class on a XAML page, during compilation the XAML compiler creates a class in code using the registered CodeDomProvider for the given language that you're compiling. This presented some challenges for getting the IronPython sample to work with the new designer.
There were two major problems:

1) The IronPython CodeDomProvider is not registered globally on the machine.
2)IronPython 1.1 does not support compiling to .NET-consumable types.

Read the rest here: http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronmar/archive/2007/08/01/ironpython-integration-sample-and-the-wpf-designer.aspx

Some More Python 3000 Questions Answered

Guido van Rossum answers some more Python 3000 FAQs on this forum

Some of the questions:

Q. Will Python 3000 have feature X (which has not been proposed yet)?

Q. Will implicit string concatenation be removed in Python 3000? (I.e., instead of ("a" "b") you'd have to write ("a" + "b").)

Q. Will the binary API for strings be standardized in Python 3000? (Depending on a compile-time switch, Unicode strings use either a 2-byte wide or 4-byte wide representation.)

Q. Why isn't the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) recursive?

Q. Will we be able to use statements in lambda in Python 3000?

Q. Will Python 3000 require tail call optimization?

Q. Will Python 3000 provide "real" private, protected and public?

Q. Will Python 3000 support static typing?

Q. Why doesn't str(c for c in X) return the string of concatenated c values?

Python 3000 FAQ

Guido van Rossum answers some Python 3000 FAQs on this forum

Here are some of the questions:

Q. I want to learn Python. Should I learn Python 2.6 or Python 3.0?

Q. If you're killing reduce(), why are you keeping map() and filter()?

Q. Multi-core processors will be standard even on laptops in the near future. Is Python 3.0 going to get rid of the GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) in order to be able to benefit from this feature?

Q. I prefer to use the same source code for 2.x and 3.0; I really don't want to have to use the 2to3 source conversion tool. Why can't you make that work?

IronMonkey: scripting Firefox natively with IronPython and IronRuby

Mozilla has announced IronMonkey, the project to map IronPython and IronRuby to Tamarin, so that Tamarin becomes multi-lingual, over time delivering high performance for all languages. The idea is to make use of the MsPL-licensed open source that Microsoft has kindly given the world, and tend necessary changes or additional code in downstream truly-open repositories that can accept patches from non-MS employees, such as FePy.

.NET Dynamic Languages Group on Facebook

Facebook has a .NET Dynamic Languages Group

Here is the URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2430928882

Some members you might know
Miguel De Icaza
Scott Hanselman
John Lam

YSlow: Speed up your web pages

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. YSlow gives you:
Performance report card
HTTP/HTML summary
List of components in the page
Tools including JSLint

Learn more and download YSlow here: http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Podcast: Josh Berkus On PostgreSQL

FLOSS Weekly 18: Josh Berkus on PostgreSQL.

Guest: Josh Berkus, member of the PostgreSQL open source database project CoreTeam and is PostgreSQL Lead for Sun Microsystems
The history and features of PostgreSQL and why you might want to use it.

Download it here: http://www.twit.tv/floss18

Python documentation team is looking for members

Georg Brandl sent out a call for people who wish to help with the python documentation.

Dear fellow Pythonistas,

as you may have heard, Python is going to get a new documentation system
soon [1]. As part of that effort, and in order to maintain the excellent
quality of the docs, we are looking for members of the maintainers team.
This is your chance to get involved with Python development!

There will be two main objectives of the group, or maybe two subgroups can
be formed:

* Maintaining the documentation contents:
- processing user submitted comments, bugs and patches
- helping out developers with docs-related matters, keeping an eye
on commits to ensure quality
- keeping the docs up-to-date, e.g. write new sections for new
Python 3000 features

The docs source will be in reStructuredText, which is already known to a
relatively high percentage of Python developers.

The new online version of the docs will contain features to add comments
and suggest changes, so it is expected that there will be some amount
of user involvement.


* Development of the toolset:
- fixing bugs in the package
- adding new output formats, e.g. info or pdf
- adding new features to the web application
- adapting it to new docutils features

Read the rest here: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2007-July/073960.html

Python To Be Part Of Foundry's Nuke

4RFV is reporting that Python will be part of Foundry's Nuke
From the site:

The Foundry will be offering sneak previews of the next major release of
its compositing application Nuke; editing professionals will be able to get an
idea of what’s to come with Furnace for Final Cut Pro; and those looking to
enhance their OFX-compatible DI and compositing solutions will get a good look
at the new Furnace 4 for OFX collection.The Foundry will preview the next
release of Nuke and has confirmed it is currently working on the
much-anticipated UI improvements, plus support for Python, an extensible
programming language, which is becoming widely supported by other application
vendors and forming the backbone of many studios pipelines. Enhanced Layer and
Channel support to eliminate the 64 channels limit, improved nodegraph
manipulation capabilities, simplified management and selection - are amongst the
other key improvements.

For further information: www.thefoundry.co.uk

Python Magazine Announced

Python Magazine has been announced

You can buy Python Magazine in one of two formats:
PDF-only, downloadable from their website and viewable using all popular PDF viewers, including xpdf, OSX Preview and, of course, Adobe Acrobat.
Print and PDF; you will receive your copy of PyMag in the mail (the regular kind) and also have access to PDF editions as they become available on their website.

Do you want to write for PyMag?

Read their Write for Us section for more information (and, in case you're wondering, they do pay for articles they publish).

Get more info here: http://www.pythonmagazine.com/

Who Am I And Why Did I Start This Blog?

My name is Denis Gobo and I am a SQL Server developer. I have been working with SQL Server since version 6. My other blogs are SQL Server Code,Tips and Tricks, Performance Tuning and http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/default.aspx. A couple of day ago I wrote a blog post titled Become A better Developer In 6 Months. In that blog post I wrote which books I would read and also what new language and framework I would learn. So as you can guess I have picked Python, PostgreSQL and Django. This blog will show my progress and struggle as I try to master these new things. After I am comfortable with these technologies I will trhrow in a little IronPyton for fun......stay tuned and wish me well

Denis