[Gnue-announce] New Releases of GNUe Tools

[James Thompson]

The GNU Enterprise team is proud to announce a new release of it's enterprise 
application development suite. This release includes: 

GNUe Forms 0.5.4 
GNUe Reports 0.1.5 
GNUe Designer 0.5.4 
GNUe AppServer 0.0.7 
GNUe Navigator 0.0.7 
GNUe Common 0.5.4 

GNUe-Forms is a platform and UI-independent forms system. It reads an 
XML-based forms definition and creates GUIs for Win32, GTK 2, and, soon, 
Curses (text), QT 3.0, and HTML. It has a fully data-aware widget set and can 
be used in both 2-tier and n-tier environments. 


GNUe-Reports is a platform and output-independent reporting system. It reads 
an XML-based report definition and generates arbitrary XML output that can 
further be translated into any format for which there is an adapter. GNUe 
Reports currently has outputs for Text, HTML, and CSV -- with PDF, 
Postscript, and Gnumeric/Excel formats in the works. Reports can output 
directly to a file, as an email attachment, to a printer, or to a HylaFax 
server. This version introduces native "Label" support. 


GNUe-Designer is the IDE for the GNUe tools. It allows you to visually layout 
your forms in a RAD-style environment. Designer has a builtin forms client, 
so you can quickly test your forms while still in Designer. Designer also has 
support for form creation wizards... answer a few questions, attach your form 
to one or more database tables, select the fields to include, and, voila, a 
basic form is created. Basic support for schema creation is also included. 


GNUe AppServer is the core of the n-tier variant of the GNU Enterprise system. 
To the front end (be it GNUe Forms, GNUe Reports or any other tool), it 
provides user-defineable business objects with arbitary fields and methods. 
While transforming access to those fields and methods into database 
communication and calling of scripts, it cares about stability, security, 
speed, and consistency. 


GNUe Navigator is a menuing system for GNUe Forms and Reports. It presents a 
consistent menuing interface (in GUI or Text) based on an XML "process 
definition." GNUe Navigator uses the GNUe Forms or GNUe Reports clients to 
run the actual forms and reports, so these corresponding tools must be 
installed. 


GNUe-Common is the basis for the GNUe tools, such as Forms, Reports, 
Application Server, and Designer. It implements a database-abstraction layer 
that provides support for most major databases. A builtin XML-to-Object 
parser and Object-to-XML marshaller are used by Forms, Reports, and Designer 
to save and read Forms/Report definitions to and from an XML file. It also 
defines and implements an RPC abstraction layer that will allow server 
processes to define their public methods once and have them available to 
CORBA, XML-RPC, SOAP, and DCOM clients. 


All of these releases are targeted at developers. The products are available 
in source form from our website at 

http://www.gnuenterprise.org/downloads/current.php 

Debian packages for "unstable" have also been created. They are already part 
of the official Debian distribution. 


The tools have been tested and are known to run on: 

GNU/Linux (RedHat 6.x/7.x/8.x, Debian 2.x/3.x/sid, Slackware 8.x, Gentoo) 
Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP/NT 
MacOS X (via the available X interface) 
Solaris 8/9 
FreeBSD 4.x/5.x 

The tools require Python 2.0 or better to run (Python 2.2+ recommended.) GNUe 
Designer requires wxPython 2.4 or better to run. 


New features in GNUe-Appserver 0.0.7: 

Database generation script for firebird/interbase 
Complete Unicode awareness 
New system property gnue_property.gnue_nullable 
New option --database for gnue-gsdgen 
Support for parameters and return values in procedures 
Own translation files, separated from common 
Updated translations 
Lots of code cleanup 
Lots of bug fixes 

New features in GNUe-Common 0.5.4: 

Fixed MySQL driver 
Improved client-side handling of server-side exceptions in RPC library 
Fixed master/detail inserts in AppServer driver 
Parameters and return values for triggers/procedures 
Table extension support in gnue-schema 
New flexible plugin loader 
Fixed Date and Datetime masks 
Separate translation files for each tool 
Added and updated translations 
Lots of code cleanup 
Lots of bug fixes 

New features in GNUe-Designer 0.5.4: 

Fixed invalid loading of wizards that aren't available 
Separate translation files for each tool 
Added and updated translations 
Lots of code cleanup 
Lots of bug fixes 

New features in GNUe-Forms 0.5.4: 

Separate translation files for each tool 
Added and updated translations 
Misc feature enhancements 
Misc bug fixes 

New features in GNUe-Reports 0.1.5: 

Made width optional on the tabulator's column heading 
Improved Unicode awareness 
Separate translation files for each tool 
Updated translations 
Minor bug fixes 

New features in GNUe-Navigator 0.0.7: 

Added embeddable form support 
Improved Unicode awareness 
Separate translation files for each tool 
Updated translations 
Minor bug fixes