ANN: eGenix.com mx Base Extension Package 2.0.5
M.-A. Lemburg
ANNOUNCING:
eGenix.com mx BASE Extension Package for Python 1.5.2 - 2.3
Version 2.0.5
Open Source Python extensions providing important and useful
services for Python programmers.
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WHAT IS IT ?:
The eGenix.com mx Base Extensions for Python are a collection of
professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability
in many important areas such as fast text searching, date/time
processing and high speed datatypes.
Python is an object-oriented Open Source programming language which
runs on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating
ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity
and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming
platform for todays IT challenges.
The tools have a proven record of being portable across many Unix and
Windows platforms. You can write applications which use the tools on
Windows and then run them on Unix platforms without change due to the
consistent platform independent interfaces.
All available packages have proven their stability and usefulness in
many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all
around the world.
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WHAT'S NEW ?
The new version includes patches needed to compile the packages
under Python 2.3.
As always we are providing precompiled versions of the package for
Windows and Linux as well as sources which allow you to install the
package on all other supported platforms.
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EGENIX.COM MX BASE PACKAGE OVERVIEW:
mxDateTime - Generic Date/Time Types
mxDateTime is an extension package that provides three new object
types, DateTime, DateTimeDelta and RelativeDateTime, which let
you store and handle date/time values in a much more natural way
than by using ticks (seconds since 1.1.70 0:00 UTC; the encoding
used by the time module).
You can add, subtract and even multiply instances, pickle and
copy them and convert the results to strings, COM dates, ticks
and some other more esoteric values. In addition, there are
several convenient constructors and formatters at hand to greatly
simplify dealing with dates and times in real-world applications.
In addition to providing an easy-to-use Python interface the
package also exports a comfortable C API interface for other
extensions to build upon. This is especially interesting for
database applications which often have to deal with date/time
values (the mxODBC package is one example of an extension using
this interface).
mxTextTools - Fast Text Processing Tools
mxTextTools is an extension package for Python that provides
several useful functions and types that implement
high-performance text manipulation and searching algorithms in
addition to a very flexible and extendable state machine, the
Tagging Engine, that allows scanning and processing text based on
low-level byte-code "programs" written using Python tuples. It
gives you access to the speed of C without the need to do any
compile and link steps every time you change the parsing
description.
Applications include parsing structured text, finding and
extracting text (either exact or using translation tables) and
recombining strings to form new text.
mxStack - Fast and Memory-Efficient Stack Type
mxStack is an extension package that provides a new object type
called Stack. It works much like what you would expect from such
a type, having .push() and .pop() methods and focusses on
obtaining maximum speed at low memory costs.
mxTools - Collection of Additional Builtins
mxTools is an extension package that includes a collection of
handy functions and objects giving additional functionality in
form of new builtins to the Python programmer.
The package auto-installs the new functions and objects as
builtins upon first import. This means that they become
instantely available to all other modules without any further
action on your part. Add the line import NewBuiltins to your
site.py script and they will be available to all users at your
site as if they were installed in the Python interpreter itself.
mxProxy - Generic Proxy Wrapper Type
mxProxy is an extension package that provides a new type that is
suitable to implement Bastion like features without the need to
use restricted execution environments.
The type's main features are secure data encapsulation (the
hidden objects are not accessible from Python since they are
stored in internal C structures), customizable attribute lookup
methods and a cleanup protocol that helps in breaking circular
references prior to object deletion.
The latest version adds a very interesting new feature: weak
references which help you work with circular references in a way
that doesn't cause memory leakage in a Python system. Note that
even though Python 2.1+ has its own weak reference implemetation,
this package can be used to write applications which also work on
Python 1.5.2 and 2.0.
mxBeeBase - On-disk B+Tree Based Database Kit
mxBeeBase is a high performance construction kit for disk based
indexed databases. It offers components which you can plug
together to easily build your own custom mid-sized databases (the
current size limit is sizeof(long) which gives you an address
range of around 2GB on 32-bit platforms).
The two basic building blocks in mxBeeBase are storage and
index. Storage is implemented as variable record length data
storage with integrated data protection features, automatic data
recovery and locking for multi process access. Indexes use a high
performance optimized B+Tree implementation built on top of
Thomas Niemann's Cookbook B+Tree implementation
(http://epaperpress.com/).
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WHERE CAN I GET IT ?
The download archives and instructions for installing the packages can
be found at:
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WHAT DOES IT COST ?
The Base package comes with a Python 2.0 style license, which means
that you can use it in both commercial and non-commercial settings
without fee or charge. Full source code is included.
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WHERE CAN I GET SUPPORT ?
Commercial quality support for these packages is available from
eGenix.com Software GmbH. Please see
http://www.egenix.com/files/python/eGenix-mx-Extensions.html#Support
for details about the eGenix support offerings.
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Enjoy,
--
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com
Professional Python Software directly from the Source (#1, Aug 12 2003)
>>> Python/Zope Products & Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/
>>> mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/
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