[align=justify]on 8th of August we did the first step towards ZeosLibs future and released the next stable version 6.6.3. Now it's time to inform you about our future plans and some other fundamental things.[/align]
[align=justify]At first we want to let you know that we cut with the 6.x branch. The next release of ZeosLib is going to have the Version number 7 but until the first stable "7"-release we will have to do quite a lot of work. We especially think about a quite fundamental enhancement (not only concerning D2009): Unicode support.[/align]
[align=justify]But let's first take you to our current stable (6.6.3): The support for this version will not be dropped! This means that we are going to do our best to backport bugfixes that are done in ZeosLib 7 and maybe add new translations. Bugfixes will only be implemented on 6.6 when they are safe and non-intrusive! They are available from svn in /branches/6.6-patches. We are planning to release so called "patch packages" that will be named 6.6.n.-stable. Those patch packages will contain critical bug fixes, translations (as mentioned above) or new/modified package files for IDE changes. [/align]
[align=justify]Due to the Unicode problem with D2009 we will support D2009 in ZeosLib 7 because to implement this unicode feature has a too deep impact on the sources and we unfortunately had to decide not to fit 6.6.3 to unicode and D2009 but ZeosLib 7 will have it. We would have to care about two code bases and for this we don't have the manpower.[/align]
[align=justify]As we are already working on the next ZeosLib 7 there is one very, very
important thing to mention: Do not use trunk at the moment because the current version is only for developers, contributors doing very high quality patches and "very early adopters" of ZeosLib 7 until a first alpha or beta release is available. Evidently, testing branch will never be stable. Please use it with care. The commits to testing branch will be "per bug" or "new feature". The commits to trunk will be batched, usually by one or two weeks and only after the changes have been in testing branch for at least one week. A new feature for you is that you are able to track the changelog via FishEye (http://fisheye2.atlassian.com/changelog/zeos).[/align]
[align=justify]So what is planned for ZeosLib 7? At first we decided to drop old compilers and older database support to thin out the packages and code. That means ZeosLib 7 will then support the following IDEs:[/align]
- Delphi 7 to Delphi XE2
- FPC/Lazarus
- MSEide and MSEgui (supported by Martin Schreiber)
- ADO
- Mysql 4.1 to 6.0,
- Interbase 5 / 6
- Firebird 1.0 to 2.5
- FreeTDS for MsSQL and Sybase
- MsSQL
- Oracle9i to 11g
- Postgres 7 to 9
- SQLite 2.8 to 3
- Sybase ASA 7-12
- Sybase ASE
[align=justify]
- Prepared Statement support (prepare once and execute it multiple times)
- An event alerter for databases that support this feature (e.g. Postgre), based on the current TZIBEventAlerter.
- Extending the property editors to make them more comfortable to use
[align=justify]So that was quite a lot of information about our future plans. We hope you will stick to us and accompany us the way towards ZeosLib 7 and beyond.[/align]
Best Regards!
Your ZeosLib Developement Team.