Current version: 1.42 Release date: Wed Apr 5 08:42:11 EDT 1995 What's new since 1.41.3 (in a nutshell) --------------------------------------- 1. Fancier generic interface and the interface-building "Fx toolkit." nxqddb(1) uses the toolkit and replaces xqddb(1). 2. As a consequence of the Fx toolkit, configuring search results, printing etc. are greatly simplified. 3. Exclude option to attributes to exclude them from indexing 4. Separators option to attributes to specify the characters that separate words (i.e. keys). 5. Reduced attribute identifiers have been re-introduced. This Schema option reduces the size of both the Database and Index files by up to 60%. 6. Misc. bug fixes and manual page updates 7. The manual has been expanded significantly and includes chapters on programming. 8. *Lots* of other nifty additions What is it? ----------- Qddb is a database suite that allows you to create relations, add tuples, modify tuples, delete tuples, and search for tuples in a fast and very flexible way. Qddb revolves around the idea of a "tuple tree," where tuples are stored and manipulated in an intuitive, pre-joined fashion. Qddb supports the following search techniques: regular expressions, words and word ranges, numbers and numeric ranges, and dates and date ranges. Approximate matching is coming soon. Qddb 1.42 can use Tcl as its configuration language, so you can build custom interfaces to your Qddb databases with it. We provide a reasonably nice generic interface so you can be up and running quickly. There are manual pages for all the utilities and Tcl commands, and we include draft 1 of a manual (qddb-1.42/Doc/Manual). If you choose to use the Tcl/Tk interface, you'll need Tcl 7.3 and Tk 3.6p1, as well as [incr Tcl] 1.5 for the toolkit. We highly recommend the TclX and BLT extensions as well. Read the FAQ and README; the user's manual in qddb-1.42/Doc/Manual has a nice chapter to get you started. A new tech-report on Qddb algorithms/structures will be available in a few days (early April): ftp.ms.uky.edu:/pub/unix/qddb/papers/255-95.ps.gz This is BETA software, but we have been happily using the underlying stuff for years. We have tested Qddb on MIPS Ultrix, OSF/1 (Alpha), BSD/{386,OS}, Linux, HP/UX, SunOS and Solaris. We have reports that it works under UnixWare, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Irix, and Sony NeWS. If you have a different operating system or architecture, we'd appreciate hearing from you. ***** From the README ***** QDDB stands for 'Quick and Dirty DataBase' (due to the nature of its origin) and is rapidly evolving. Most of the code has changed drastically (or has been totally rewritten) from the original version and is now much more stable. The program(s) are currently in BETA condition, so there are undoubtedly numerous bugs that we would appreciate hearing about. Suggestions and bug reports are also quite welcome. There is a mailing list 'qddb-users@ms.uky.edu' that you can subscribe to for general discussion/information about qddb. Send mail to: 'qddb-users-request@ms.uky.edu' with the subject of 'subscribe' and a body containing your name/e-mail address. I monitor this list and I will usually answer posted questions. For bug reports, you may wish to submit them to both 'qddb-users@ms.uky.edu' and 'qddb-bugs@ms.uky.edu' so that other qddb users may benefit from your ill experiences. Please note that minor Qddb versions are generally announced *only* to the qddb-users mailing list. How can I help? --------------- We need people to play with the Fx toolkit and provide feedback. Bug reports, feature enhancement requests, and reports of documentation inadequacies are appreciated. INDEX ----- The qddb-examples.tar.gz file contains a few example relations, one being a fully populated "Jargon File" relation. (Nothing new since qddb-1.40.3). The qhelp-0.3.tar.gz is an example hypertext help system that uses Qddb as the mechanism for storing hypertext link information. The fx-examples directory contains some sample custom Fx-based applications. It grows from time to time.