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Versant/Eiffel Interface

Targets ISE 4.2 and Halstenbach 3.0 compilers with Versant OODBMS version 5.0.8 under Solaris 2.6, Windows NT 4.0 and Linux (RH 6.0).
Version 1.0 - October 4th, 1999.
Copyrighted Eiffel Forum Freeware License.

vers1_0.tgz (833,483 bytes) - the Versant/Eiffel Interface library source code
http://www.grator.org/ (Open Source Eiffel libraries home page)
http://www.grator.org/versant/ (Versant/Eiffel Interface home page)
http://www.netlabs.net/~richieb/ (Richie Bielak's home page)

Introduction

This interface between Eiffel and Versant OODBMS has been developed as part of the Rainbow project at CALFP Bank. The development was started in early 1995 and today the library is used in the production version of Rainbow.

The current code has been used with ISE 4.2 and Halstenbach 3.0 compilers. We have used the library on Solaris 2.6, Windows NT 4.0 and Linux (RH 6.0). The code works with Versant OODBMS version 5.0.8.

The first release of the library is just a working snapshot of our current code. The Eiffel/Versant library is licensed under the Eiffel Forum License.

Description

The Versant/Eiffel package consists of two parts:

A library of classes that can be used to write applications with presistent objects - that is objects that can be stored and retrieved from the Versant databases.
Several tool programs to manipulate the schema and instances in the database.

To be able to use this library you need the following packages (which are not free:

Eiffel compiler - either ISE 4.2 or Halstenbach 3.0.
Versant OODBMS - version 5.0.8 or better.

What's new

October 4th, 1999 - initial release of v1.0.

Downloads

CVS server is not active yet. You can download the current version from the Versant/Eiffel Interface home page.

Documentation

The documentation is far from complete. If you'd have any specific suggestions or problems please let us know. We will fix it.

HTML documentation is available at the Versant/Eiffel Interface home page.

Known Problems

Genericity typing problem - 1999/9/30
The new ISE (4.4 and greater) and Halstenbach (4.0 and greater) compilers perform more precise type check on generic types. In the past, these compilers considered two generic types to be the same as long as the corresponding generics were both expanded or both references.

In the Eiffel/Versant library we use assigment attempt in several places, and with the new type checking assignments that worked in the past will fail. We are in process of fixing this code and it will be part of v1.1 - the development version.
ANY.twin - 1999/9/30
The routine "twin" is used in several places in the library code. You will have to add "twin" to your own library. The easiest is to add it in class ANY:
```
twin: like Current is
    do
        Result := clone (Current)
    end
                
```

Mailing List

There is a mailing list at eGroups for discussion of this library. You can see the message archive and subscribe to list by going to:

http://www.egroups.com/group/eiffel-versant-discuss/info.html

Credits

Many people contributed code and ideas to this library. The main team consists of: Jean-Pierre Sarkis, Gurvan Lullien, Jean-Francois Zubillaga, Jacques Goldsmith, and Richie Bielak. Important design ideas were given to us by Philippe Stephan. Finally the database tools and testing programs were greatly improved by Paul Bethe.

Richard Bielak

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