Tcl Relational Algebra Library / News: Recent posts

I am pleased to announce the availability of Version 0.10.2 of TclRAL.

Version 0.10.2 is a bug fix release. Problems with using bignums were fixed
along with some code cleanup. All users are encouraged to upgrade to the
new version.

TclRAL is a "C" based extension to Tcl that adds two new data types, Tuple and
Relation, to Tcl's native data types and provides a set of commands that form a
complete relational algebra on the new types. TclRAL also adds relation
variables with the ability to specify and enforce identifying, referential and
procedural integrity constraints.... read more

I am pleased to announce the availability of Version 0.10.1 of TclRAL.

TclRAL is a "C" based extension to Tcl that adds two new data types, Tuple and
Relation, to Tcl's native data types and provides a set of commands that form a
complete relational algebra on the new types. TclRAL also adds relation
variables with the ability to specify and enforce identifying, referential and
procedural integrity constraints.... read more

I am pleased to announce the availability of Version 0.10.0 of TclRAL.

TclRAL is a "C" based extension to Tcl that adds two new data types, Tuple and
Relation, to Tcl's native data types and adds a set of commands that are a
complete relational algebra on the new types. TclRal also adds relation
variables with the ability to specify and enforce identifying, referential and
procedural integrity constraints.... read more

I am pleased to announce the availability of Version 0.9.1 of TclRAL.

TclRAL is a "C" based extension to Tcl that makes available Tuple and Relation
data types as native Tcl types and supplies a complete set of relational
algebraic operators for these types. Since relations are a "universal" data
type, applications containing more complicated data structures can often
benefit from casting their data into relational form rather than the arrays of
nested lists of nested dicts that is characteristic of more ad hoc approaches.
The commands that operate on relations do so in a "set at a time" fashion and
reduce the amount of iterative code that needs to be written.... read more

I have reinstated the 0.9.0 release. I discovered a problem with the win32 package (package-ral-0.9.0-win32-ix86.zip). This file had an incorrect package index file. If you have previously installed this package (and it did not load correctly), please uninstall it (teacup remove), download and install the current one. Sorry for the mishap.

I have withdrawn the 0.9.0 release as there is an error in at least the win32 package. This will be corrected soon and I will reinstate the release.

Revision 0.9.0 is a major change in TclRAL. Prior to this revision, TclRAL
contained a fundamental conceptual error in the way it treated relation values.
Previously, identification constraints were associated with relation values.
This was incorrect as those constraints should only be associated with relation
variables or relvars.

This error has been corrected in revision 0.9.0. However, the correction forced
significant script level incompatibility with revisions 0.8.9 and earlier.
Under the assumption that once backwards compatibility is broken it does not
matter how large the break is, TclRAL 0.9.0 cleans up a number of command
interfaces, adds new commands and discards much accumulated cruft. The release
notes give the details.

This release corrects several problems associated with
generating the internal hash keys a that provide the
indexing used in several of the commands. The problems
first appeared in join commands where the concatenation
of the string represenation of the identifiers was the
same for two distinct tuples of the join. All users
are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Raloo version 0.2 is released. This version has had a substantial rewrite of the thread of control dispatch code. This version also corresponds to software that is the subject of my paper for the 15th Annual Tcl/Tk conference on 20-24 October 2008.

Version 0.8.8 is a bug fix release. It corrects a number of problems with the interaction of TclRAL types with the internal Tcl object type system. All users are encouraged to update to this version.

Andrew Mangogna

I have released Version 0.8.7 to fix the problems with serialization that was introduced in the Version 0.8.5 release. All users are encouraged to update your installations.

Andrew

I found a serious problem with Version 0.8.6 in the serialization procedures. I accidentally included code that I was intending for 0.9 in the release. This basically broke the serialization code. Look for Version 0.8.7 release soon.

Andrew

Version 0.8.6 is a code clean up release. There were a number of GCC specific constructs that were in the source that caused errors for other compilers (e.g. the native Sun compiler). There was no change in functionality, only the elimination of some anonymous unions in a couple data structures.

I have released version 0.8.5. This is a bug fix release and corrects a latent bug that was exposed as a result in a small change in the semantics of the Tcl_RegisterConfig() function. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this version, especially if you are running Tcl 8.5.

Since the release of Tcl 8.5, precompiled binaries for Tcl 8.4 are no longer supplied in the release. Tcl 8.4 users will need to compile the extension themselves.

I release Version 0.8.4. This is bug fix release that fixes a problem with the "relation group" command that under certain circumstances can trigger a code assertion. Upgrading is encouraged, but if you don't trigger the assertion in Version 0.8.3 there are no other changes in this release.

Version 0.8.3 is now available. This is primarily a bug fix release but does contain a few new commands.

I released Version 0.8.2 on 27 Feb 2007. This is primarily a bug fix release, however, there are a few new commands and a couple of small command interface changes. Enjoy!

Version 0.8.1 is now available. It is backwards
compatible at the script level. The major new
feature is the ability to trace relvar operations.

I'm nearing the end of some additional work
in preparation for Version 0.8.1. This release
will be backward compatible at the script level,
but will add several new commands and, most
importantly, the ability to add traces to relvars.

I have released Version 0.8 of TclRAL. Source tarball is available for download. Linux binary packages for i386 machines and Windows binary packages for both Tcl 8.4 and 8.5 are also available.

I've frozen the interfaces for Version 0.8 in preparation for releasing soon. I will be presenting a paper on TclRAL at the Tcl/Tk conference this October and plan to release 0.8 before that time.

Despite the long time between releases, I have been diligently working on Rev 0.8. The CVS repository has been updated. The code is completely refactored and mostly rewritten. The "tuple" and "relation" commands are essentially done. With this base in hand, I'll be moving on to reworking the "relvar" command to include referential integrity checking.

Version 0.7 is now available. This version has improved TEA compliant build procedures and support for "virtual" relvars.

I decided to go ahead and do the initial release. I added a couple of commands and certainly more testing needs to be done, but its time to get it out there and let others have a crack at it. Now the fun begins!

I have finished the work on infering the proper types and identifiers for all of the generated relations. This is all the functions I had intended for the first release. It remains to do more testing and code clean up. But with luck, I should have a release within a month.