Development

PostgreSQL releases version 8.3

Version 8.3 of the PostgreSQL DBMS was announced on February 4, 2008: "Today the PostgreSQL Global Development Group releases the long-awaited version 8.3 of the most advanced open source database, which cements our place as the best performing open source database."

Version 8.3 brings many new features. First on the list is the cleaning up of data type conversions. This improvement may impact backwards compatibility issues with older applications, but will insure better data integrity in the future.

There are four new capabilities that aim to improve the consistency of response times, these include Heap Only Tuple for speeding up access to frequently updated data, asynchronous commits, spread checkpoint autotuning and a just-in-time background writing strategy. There have been numerous speed improvements including better recovery time for the write ahead log, faster small-merge joins, faster LIKE/ILIKE comparisons, improvements to searches using LIMIT, lazy XID assignment for improving read-mostly database speed and function costing for faster query planning.

Large database support improvements include synchronized scans for multiple users, level 2 cache scan protection to prevent CPU thrashing and reductions in the size of headers for variable size fields. Windows users will benefit from new Visual C++ support and some code rewrites.

Administration improvements include output of logs to database-loadable files, SSPI and GSSAPI support for Kerberos authentication, embeddable GUC settings at function creation time, parallel autovacuum workers, the pg_standby tool for configuring warm standby servers and a new ability to specify the position of NULLs at the beginning or end of results.

Development improvements include API improvements to the full text search tool, plan invalidation for clearing cached plans and automatically dropping plans when tables are updated, and updatable cursors.

Data type enhancements include full support for the ANSI SQL:2003 XML spec, support for 128 bit UUIDs, support for arrays of compound types and support for ENUM columns with a defined ordered list of alternatives. The ENUM enhancement allows applications to be migrated from the MySQL DBMS.

The PostgreSQL stored procedure language has a simplified syntax for row-returning functions and new support for scrollable cursors, which allows procedures to perform complex row manipulations.

A number of new accessory tools are being released with PostgreSQL 8.3 including a multi-threaded connection pooler, a distributed, horizontally scaled table interface, an SNMP interface, a SELinux-based security extension, a new GUI with debugging and step-through execution capabilities, a new replicated query agent, a multi-master asynchronous replication system, an integrated clustering tools project and an improved replication system.

For more information on the new features in PostgreSQL 8.3, see the release notes. The feature matrix gives a tabular view of features added versus the version number.

In order to speed the next release up, the PostgreSQL team plans to implement a new development plan for version 8.4:

Version 8.3 represents a major step forward for PostgreSQL, if the new development style bears fruit, the next major version will come about more quickly.

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System Applications

Database Software

Postgres Weekly News

The February 3, 2008 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

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Networking Tools

Open1X: XSupplicant 2.0.1 (SourceForge)

Version 2.0.1 of Open1X has been announced. "Open1X is an open source implementation of the IEEE 802.1X protocol. This project includes support for the authenticator and supplicant, while other projects (e.g., FreeRADIUS) provide support for the authentication server. XSupplicant version 2.0.1 has been released. This release fixes bugs that have been found since the 2.0.0 release. It does not contain any new features."

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Web Site Development

Apache Software Foundation makes Apache Synapse a Top-Level Project

Apache Software Foundation has announced the promotion of Apache Synapse to an independent Top-Level Project. "Apache Synapse v1.1.1 alleviates the traditionally cumbersome development and integration process; enterprises can reliably employ Open Source through Synapse's support for numerous open standards such as HTTP, SOAP, FTP, SMTP, XML, XSLT, XPath, JMS, Web Services Security (WSS), Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM), and more. In addition, Synapse supports a number of useful functions out-of-the-box without programming, and can be extended using popular programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and Groovy."

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ZK: 3.0.3 Released (SourceForge)

Version of has been announced. "ZK is Ajax framework enriching Web apps with little programming. With event-driven and markup languages, development is as simple as programming desktops and authoring HTML/XUL pages. ZK supports scripting lang including Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy... Over 8 new features and 22 bugs fixed, ZK 3.0.3 focuses mainly on fixing bugs and improving performance. More languages are supported for messages, and more formats are supported to JasperReports."

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Miscellaneous

ALE Server: 1.1.3 Released (SourceForge)

Version 1.1.3 of logicAlloy ALE, an RFID-EPC compliant RFID middleware platform, has been has been announced. "This new version has minor updates addressing bugs."

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Zumastor 0.6 released

Version 0.6 of Zumastor has been announced. "For those just tuning in, Zumastor is free software that adds enterprise storage features (primarily improved snapshots and remote replication) to Linux. Zumastor's snapshots share space more effectively than LVM snapshots, and it makes snapshots easily accessible by users (e.g. via Samba's "Previous Versions" feature)."

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Desktop Applications

Desktop Environments

GNOME Development Release 2.21.90 announced

GNOME Development Release 2.21.90 is available for testing. "This is our sixth development release on our road towards GNOME 2.22.0, which will be released in March 2008. Your mission is simple: Go download it. Go compile it. Go test it. And go hack on it, document it, translate it, fix it."

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GARNOME 2.21.90 is available

Version 2.21.90 of GARNOME, the GNOME testing distribution, has been announced. "We are pleased to announce the release of GARNOME 2.21.90 Desktop and Developer Platform. This is the ninetieth, err... sixth development release on our road towards GNOME 2.22.0, which will be released in March 2008. This release comes with more features, more fixes, and yet more madness. Yes, *fixes*! :) It is for anyone who wants to get his hands dirty on the development branch, or who'd like to get a peek at future features."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:

• Beagle 0.3.3 (new features, bug fixes and translation work)
• GNet 2.0.8 (API changes, new features and bug fixes)
• gnome-games 2.21.90 (new features, bug fixes and translation work)
• Gnome-schedule 2.0.1 (bug fixes)
• gnubiff 2.2.9 (bug fixes and translation work)
• kiwi 1.9.20 (new features, bug fixes and translation work)
• libxklavier 3.4 (translation work)
• Manslide 1.9.10 (new features, bug fixes and translation work)
• Pygtksourceview 2.1.1 (API change and documentation work)
• seahorse 2.21.91 (API change and translation work)

You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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KDE 4.0.1 Released

KDE 4.0 users are likely to be interested in the recently-announced 4.0.1 release, which contains a pile of important fixes. "Improvements in this release include, but are not limited to: Konqueror, KDE's webbrowser has seen numerous stability and performance fixes in its HTML rendering engine KHTML, in its Flash plugin loader and in KJS, the JavaScript engine. Stability problems have been addressed in components that are used all over the KDE codebase."

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Sun and Frontline Support KDE with Donation of Server (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports that Sun and Frontline have donated a new server to KDE. "During a tutorial today on-stage at linux.conf.au, Sun Microsystems and Frontline donated a server to the KDE project, available for shipment within hours. Aaron Seigo, Plasma developer and KDE e.V President, accepted a certificate from Ross Cunningham of Sun Microsystems and David Purdue of Frontline on behalf of the KDE project."

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KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The January 27, 2008 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "Heavy refactoring and work on merging translation branches in Lokalize (which is renamed from "Kaider", and moved from playground to kdesdk). Work on a question editor in KEduca. Work on real-time cloud imagery in Marble. An initial implementation of a new undo stack in KWordQuiz. The start of a KAlgebra, Rot13, KWorldClock, and Pastebin Plasma applet, with the inclusion of more functionality from KDE 3.5 (such as the multi-row taskbar panel) in Plasma..."

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week:

• cb2Bib 0.9.3 (bug fixes)
• eric4 4.1.0 (Python 2.5 support, new features, bug fixes)
• FALF Player 1.1/1.2dev (new features and bug fixes)
• I Hear U 0.6.0 (new features and bug fixes)
• kmk 0.23.15.5 (new features)
• Tellico 1.3 (new features)

You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:

• luit 1.0.3 (bug fixes and documentation work)

More information can be found on the X.Org Foundation wiki.

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Imaging Applications

ij-plugins Toolkit v.1.2 (SourceForge)

Version of ij-plugins Toolkit has been announced, it features bug fixes and other improvements. "The 'ImageJ Plugins' project is a source of custom plugins for the Image/J software. Image/J is a public domain image processing and analysis program developed in Java".

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Interoperability

osslsigncode: Version 1.3 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.3 of osslsigncode has been announced. "Platform-independent tool for Authenticode signing of EXE/CAB files - uses OpenSSL and libcurl. It also supports timestamping. Includes padding fix and support for signing of already signed files."

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Medical Applications

WorldVistA EHR VOE/ 1.0 available (LinuxMedNews)

Version 1.0 of WorldVistA EHR VOE has been announced. "WorldVistA announces the release and availability of WorldVistA EHR VOE/ 1.0, the only open source EHR that meets Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHITSM) ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) criteria for 2006. WorldVistA EHR VOE/ 1.0 is based on and compatible with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) world renowned EHR, VistA®. After completion of the VOE project, WorldVistA made additional enhancements and successfully submitted WorldVistA EHR for certification by CCHIT."

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Music Applications

wcnt 1.26.2 released

Version 1.26.2 of WCNT, a modular synthesis sampling sequencing audio wav file generator, is out with lots of new capabilities and bug fixes. "Second release of wcnt-1.26 after the pre releases..."

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Office Suites

OpenOffice.org Newsletter

The January, 2008 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is out with the latest OO.o office suite articles and events.

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Video Applications

MediaInfo: 0.7.5.8 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.7.5.8 of MediaInfo has been announced. "MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about video or audio files (MKV/AVI/MOV/MPEG1, 2, 4/M4A/M4V/MP3/AAC/RM/...) There are several versions: Graphical interface, Command line, or DLL for third-party software developers (like emule). GUI is multi-language. In this release: Full parsing of DivX/XviD/H264/AVC settings (profile...) for Matroska and AVI, Better handling of OpenDML files, Musepack SV8 support, 2GiB+ files parsing under Linux and MacOS and some bug patches."

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Transform SWF: 2.2 Released (SourceForge)

Version 2.2 of Transform SWF has been announced. "The Transform SWF framework parses and encodes Flash (.swf) files. Classes for each of the tags and data structures in the Flash (SWF) File Format Specification are provided along with utility classes for a high level API for generating Flash files. This release contains new convenience classes to simplify handling and generating flash files. FSHeader for getting information on files without decoding them completely; FSFrame for grouping together all the objects associated with a frame in a move and FSLayer for creating separate time-lines when displaying objects."

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Web Browsers

Mozilla Links Newsletter

The January 31, 2008 edition of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is online, take a look for the latest news about the Mozilla browser and related projects.

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Languages and Tools

C

GCC 4.2.3 Released

Version 4.2.3 of the Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) has been released. "GCC 4.2.3 is a bug-fix release, containing fixes for regressions in GCC 4.2.2 relative to previous GCC releases"

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The February 5, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

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Lisp

GNU CLISP 2.44 released

Version 2.44 of GNU CLISP has been announced. "This version speeds up list and sequence functions, splits off the libffcall library, and fixes many bugs."

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Python

Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The February 4, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

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Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The February 1, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The February 4, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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Libraries

image4j: 0.7 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.7 of image4j has been announced. "Read and Write ICO,BMP formats in 100% pure Java Been a long time in the making, but I've finally gotten round to the final release for 0.7 The library appears to be stable, hence my decision to finalize the current release."

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Version Control

GIT 1.5.4 released

Version 1.5.4 of GIT, a distributed version control system, has been announced. "Changes since v1.5.3: 1595 non-merge commits 165 contributors 684 files changed, 70435 insertions, 28984 deletions"

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