Druid, The Database Manager News

This release closes the JDBC chapter and offers a new set of features and improvements:

General:

- Now druid remembers the size of its window and reloads the last project
- Many improvements on datatypes (remapping, merging, usage)
- Added multiple foreign keys support
- Added more chapters to the druid's manual
- Fixed some minor bugs
- Minor improvements

JDBC features:

- Import of the jdbc db into druid
- Added the possibility to add-modify-delete a table's records
for all types of drivers (with updatable result-sets or not)
- Added a record editor to edit large data, view binary and blob types
- Added import/export facilities. It is now possible to export the records
of a table and to reimport them later (applies to a table or the entire DB).
- Minor improvements (better datatypes recognition, sorted entities, ...)

Added a new plug-in architecture in the following areas:

- docs, sql, summary and datadict generation
you can write your own module to generate data in the format you need

- code generation
you can add the code generation for the language you use

- entries in the popupmenus
you can add modules to the project-view, datatypes-view, jdbc-view to
perform specific operations

This architecture will be expanded a bit in the 3.0 release to include
menu entries and tab panels.

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HOW TO WRITE A MODULE

- write one or more classes that inherits from the following interfaces:
CodeGenModule, DatadictGenModule, DbGenModule, DocsGenModule, SqlGenModule
SummaryGenModule, TreeNodeModule (see in src/druid/interfaces)

- make a jar and put it in the "modules" dir

- rerun druid to load the module(s)

You may select the "config -> modules" option to see if the module has been
loaded. Look into the mod package (src/mod) for some examples (the mod
package is the source of the druid-native module)

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The druid file format is changed a little but don't worry. This release
can load the previous format (but saves into the new one). You have to
set only the following attribs in the database / file-dirs tab:

- code out file
- code options

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A little note about JDBC. If you use a driver which doesn't support
updatable result-sets keep in mind that druid performs its insert / update
/ delete operations using displayed fields. This implies that the visible
fields *MUST* form a primary key for the table, otherwise the operation
may affect more records.

To insert a new record in table follow these steps:

- press the new button (druid enters the "insert mode" and displays a
blank record in the last position)

- enter data in the last record

- press the new button again to insert data into the table

To exit the insert mode simply remove the last record.

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After this release there will be a long developing period without
intermediate releases but expect some modules from me or from other
developers (an XML module is currently under development by a user)

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That's all folks. Enjoy this new release !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrea Carboni