Cleaning up the patches list

Wow! I think our patch list is too big and I need to do something about it! :)

Sorry all who sent your patches and didn't have them applied yet. I'm starting to run through the list and reviewing/discussing/applying them.

If you have any patch you think needs urgent attention, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Life after PGCon2008...

PGCon 2008 was awesome!!! I could meet a lot of people from postgresql community and take a lot of pictures!! I even got a picture with Tom Lane! Thank you very much, Selena! :)

I finally could meet Dave Page in person. Dave has helped Npgsql project in the beginning, 2002 and we never have met before!

I also could meet Magnus Hagander in person. He is a very nice person. I saw some of his talks and was very good!

I also could meet Hiroshi Saito and Josh Cooley. Hiroshi Saito is a big evangelist of Npgsql in Japan and has done a great work to talk to others about Npgsql there. Josh Cooley has been working on Npgsql adding nice features, like System.Transactions and entity framework support, and fixing bugs. I enjoyed very much to meet them and doing the presentation. Our presentation was very nice considering this was my first time doing a presentation in english. Josh said my english was good, so I was ok. Thank you Josh!

Another person I enjoyed very much to talk to was Selena. She is very nice. She makes me remember of Brazilian girls because she is very active and has very strong energy. She even talked about my twitter and so this explains why suddenly I started to be followed by some other people!! Selena, it was a great pleasure to meet you.

I'd like to thank Dan Langille for his support which allowed me to be here in Canada to attend this conference.

The unexpected thing which occur in this PGCon2008 was that Fernando Ike who was doing a presentation just before mine asked me to make a real time translation of his speech! So, just before I do my first talk in english I had to make my first real time translation! I must confess that I was very nervous but in the end everything was fine!

Well, that's it! I will add more later.

See you.....

And now going to Toronto to see Niagara Falls

Hi all!!

Tomorrow I'm leaving Ottawa heading to Toronto to see Niagara Falls. I'll be taking a bus to go there and I hope to be able to get some guided tour to Falls. If not, I will go by myself anyway :)

I will be at Backpackers on Dundas hostel and I plan to stay there until next Tuesday when I will go back to Ottawa for PG Con.

So, if you are in Toronto and would like to talk about Npgsql, Postgresql or Mono, or just want to talk, please, drop me a mail.

P.S.: Kangaroo (Mono irc, sorry if this isn't exactly your nickname) please, drop me a mail so we can have some beers in Toronto!

See you.

Going to Canada...

Hi, all!!

It's a great pleasure to say I'm going to attend PGCon2008 this year!! :)

I'm going to Canada tomorrow (May, 11) and hope to enjoy Ottawa and Canada before conference starts.

If you live in Ottawa and would like to talk about Npgsql, Mono, .Net or anything else, please drop me a mail.

About Npgsql, I posted on npgsql-devel list about an Npgsql2 beta4 release this week. But unfortunately it won't be possible. Josh is fixing some last bugs and will be doing a release next week. Sorry for any problems this announce may have caused.


So, that's it!

Stay tuned!

Looking for accommodation tips at Ottawa, Canada

Hi all!

I'm right now looking for accommodations in Ottawa, Canada. I'm going to do a presentation about Npgsql at PGCon2008 and as I never went to Ottawa I don't know of any good place to stay. If you have any tips about cheap hotels, hostels or anything , please, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Update: I'd really really thank you all of those who gave me tips about places in Ottawa. I already did my reservation and hope to see you there at PGCon2008!!

Npgsql2 Beta3 released!!

Hi all!!

Npgsql2 Beta3 has been released!

You can see full release notes here.
You can download files from here.


I'd like to thank everybody involved. This wouldn't be possible without your help.

I will post with more details about the new features and updates we had with this release.
Stay tuned!!

Npgsql at PGCON2008! Here we go!

Hi, all!

It's a great pleasure to say that "Introducing Npgsql" will be presented at PGCON2008 by me, Josh Cooley and Hiroshi Saito!

To me is a great pleasure to be able to meet such great guys! It will be very nice to meet Dave Page too! He helped me very much since beginning of the project. Also, I will have the opportunity to meet other great people from Postgresql community!

I'm very excited! I already have my passport and now I'm waiting to get my visa to enter in Canada!

This is my first international trip and I think I'm starting very well! I hope to be able to attend international open source meetings more often.

This is my first time in Canada and I'm planning to stay from May 12 through May 30. If you have any tips about accommodation, places to eat, sleep and go in Canada (day and night :) ), please, let me know!

Thanks everybody and thanks God for this opportunity.

See you in Canada at PGCON2008!!

Array support commited in Npgsql2 cvs

Hi, all!

As previously stated, array support was in the works and now it is commited to cvs!

So, from now on you can start persisting array data to postgresql. Thanks very much to Jon Hanna for getting this work done.

Now, you can persist arrays and, as Jon said in previous post's comments: "Anything that implements IEnumerable<T> where T is a type already supported by npgsql will be treated the same as T[], anything that implements IEnumerable<U> where U implements IEnumerable<T> will be treated the same as T[,] (but cause an error if it's a "jagged" array, as postgres doesn't support them) and so on. In order to use it, just use an array or IEnumerable<T> as parameter value."

So, let the game begin!

Also, thanks to Michael Parshin for his help fixing bugs on array type support.

I'm back from my vacation!

Hi, all!

I just returned from my trip to visit my grandfather and other related. It was very, very enjoyable and I could get some rest and meet great people! I took a lot of pictures with my digital camera ( in fact, I took more pictures this time than ever in my whole life! ) I shall post some here later.

About development activities, I will be returning to Npgsql project and start to integrate many patches which are pending. Josh Cooley did the excellent job with Npgsql2 beta2 release so you can enjoy some of the newest features we implemented lately. Stay tuned for more features and improvements!! I'd like to thank Daniel Nauck for his asp.net providers implementation which are also available for download. Thank you, Daniel!

That's all, folks. I will keep you informed as soon as I get more news.

Going out on vacation for 2-3 weeks

Hi, all!

On this end of year, I'm going visit my grandfather. So, I will be out
for 2 or three weeks starting on this wednesday (2007-12-12). But don't worry, Npgsql will be in excellent hands: Josh Cooley will be heading any new beta release (which we expect to be released soon) and all patches and reviews needed.
I don't know if there will be Internet connection where I'm going to, but if there is, I will let you know.

Thanks everybody and Merry Christmas!!

Npgsql listed as one of MS Entity Framework providers in Press Release

Hi, all!

Microsoft has released its beta 3 of ADO.Net Entity Framework and Npgsql is one of the providers which will support it. We are working on this support and, as announced, we will have support for entity framework whithin 3 months of RTM. That's exciting news and shows we are doing a good work to bring better and better support for Postgresql .Net developers! Stay tuned!

References:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTH06106122007-1.htm
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20071206-904072.html?mod=wsjcrmain

Npgsql2 Beta1 Released!!

Hi, all!

Npgsql Development Team is proud to announce that Npgsql2 Beta1 is available! Its assembly version is 1.98.1, just in case you need to configure something with it using its assembly number.

In this release, besides the usual bug fixes, we would like to highlight initial support for System.Transactions, COPY IN/OUT and uuid postgresql 8.3 datatype.

Full release notes can be found here.

You can get it at the usual place.

I'd like to thank God for allowing me to make this happen.

I'd like to help all who helped us contributing with feedback, bug fixes and comments which allowed us to improve Npgsql even more!

Stay tuned for more features in upcoming releases.

Keep your feedback and bug fixes coming!

UUID datatype and COPY IN/OUT support added to cvs

Hi all!

It was just added support to uuid datatype in cvs head. This type will be available in next Postgresql release 8.3. Thanks to David Bachmann for his patch! You can get more info about this patch in this mailing list post.

Also was added support for copy in and copy out operations. Now, users can provide streams which can be copied directly to and from Postgresql tables! Thanks to Kalle Hallivuori for providing a patch! Thanks to Truviso for giving support to Kalle. More info about that including a demo and ready to use compiled Npgsql.dll versions can be found here.

That's it! As soon as we get more features added, I will post info about them here. Stay tuned! :)

Npgsql has a new homepage layout

Hi, all!

After some research on open source site web designs: www.oswd.org, www.openwebdesign.org and www.opendesigns.org, I finally choose this one, from styleshout. Npgsql homepage now looks nicer than previous one.

Please, send your feedback and suggestions for this new site.

Thanks in advance.

Npgsql License Changed to BSD!!!

Hi, all!!

Well, it is finally here... Npgsql is now licensed under BSD License!! We had to drop two patches which we didn't got approval license change for. One patch, from Torben, wasn't being used anymore and another from Gridnine can give some problems with case mixed table and column names. We will work on another fix for this problem until next release under new license.

This is an exciting news and this license change opens a new horizon for Npgsql2. We have a lot of work to do as we were holding a lot of patches. So, expect to see many new features being implemented. More news about them will be posted here. Stay tuned!!


Thank you very much to all patch owners who helped with this license transition.

Thanks God for allowing all this to happen.

Npgsql License change is almost done!

UPDATE2 at 2007-08-10: Chris just sent me his permission. So, now, there are only 2 permissions pending. License change is very near!!

UPDATE: Daniel Morgan and Magnus Hagander sent me their permission. We are now waiting for others to send theirs.


Hi all!!

I have been revising some more files to make Npgsql license change and we are very close now.

There are only 6 files pending waiting for permissions:

NpgsqlCommandBuilder.cs

Waiting license change permission from gridnine systems.
http://pgfoundry.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1000447&group_id=1000140&atid=592


NpgsqlDataReader.cs

Waiting Daniel Morgan license chage permission request.


NpgsqlParameter.cs

Waiting license change permission from gridnine systems.
http://pgfoundry.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1000447&group_id=1000140&atid=592


NpgsqlRowDescription.cs

Waiting license change permission from Magnus Hagander.



PGUtil.cs

Waiting license change permission from Chris Wenneman


NpgsqlTypesHelper.cs

Waiting license change permission from Torben.



To me, the most problematic permission will be from gridnine systems: (www.gridnine.com) because I already sent a mail before and didn't have any answer. I'm afraid the person who posted the patch doesn't remember his patch or can't be found. If you are from gridnine or know someone from there, please let them know I'm asking their permission to change the license of their patch.

Gridnine patch changed a lot of code at the time it was created, but today it just affects two lines, so I think that even if we don't get their permission, we can live without their patch.

Permission from Daniel and Magnus is a matter of time as I already talked to them just didn't ask them officially for their permission.

I hope to be getting permissions from Chris and Torben really soon.

With all those permissions we are set to go!!

I will keep everybody informed about that as I'm receiving permissions.

Thanks all for your help.

Initial Npgsql2 provider factory support added to cvs

UPDATE: Thomas Burkhart sent me a mail telling me that this configuration syntax doesn't work on ms.net 2.0. This is the version which works:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<configuration>

<system.data>
<DbProviderFactories>

<add name="Npgsql Data Provider" invariant="Npgsql" support="FF" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for Postgresql Server" type="Npgsql.NpgsqlFactory, Npgsql, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5d8b90d52f46fda7" />

</DbProviderFactories>
</system.data>

</configuration>


Thomas said that "the tags are case sensitive and the must be outside any <applicationSettings>"


Thank you Thomas for your feedback which, for sure will help others to get their configuration up and running. I will check with Mono guys to see why my original configuration worked.




Hi all!

Today I committed an initial support for provider factory to Npgsql2.

This will allow ado.net 2.0 users to work with Npgsql using ado.net generic coding.

In order to use it, you have to add the following xml config in your machine.config or yourapp.exe.config file:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<configuration>
<appsettings>

<system.data>
<dbproviderfactories>

<add name="Npgsql Data Provider" invariant="Npgsql" support="FF" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for Postgresql Server" type="Npgsql.NpgsqlFactory, Npgsql, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5d8b90d52f46fda7">
</add>
</dbproviderfactories>
</system.data>
</appsettings>
</configuration>


P.S.: Sorry for indentation lacking. I don't know how to add it on blogger :(

Note that this is the full contents of a yourapp.exe.config file. If you are changing the machine.config file, just add the "add name=..." section.

The key elements here are the invariant name which will be used in your application when returning the provider factory. In this case it is defined as "Npgsql". But you can specify whatever you want.


That's it! If everything is ok, you will be able to write some code like that, to connect to postgresql:


using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.Common;


public class c
{
public static void Main(String[] args)
{

DbProviderFactory factory = DbProviderFactories.GetFactory("Npgsql");

DbConnection conn = factory.CreateConnection();

conn.ConnectionString = "Server=127.0.0.1;User id=npgsql_tests;password=npgsql_tests;";

conn.Open();

conn.Close();


}
}


Enjoy!


P.S.: Npgsql2 code is found in Npgsql2 cvs module. See here for more info about how to get it.

Warning: This is a very early code, so bugs still exist and there are things missing. Basic functionality should work ok.

Started works on Npgsql2

Hi all,

We already started to work on Npgsql2 with support for .net 2.0 and ado.net 2.0. Josh Cooley already refactored all Npgsql classes to extend from .net 2.0 classes, like DbCommand, DbConnection and others. We hope to have a preview release soon with some long awaited features like Provider Factory support, design time in vs.net 2005 and others.

Stay tuned!

Npgsql 1.0 Released!! A little bit of its history

Hi all!

I'm really happy to announce that Npgsql Team has released Npgsql 1.0 final!

I started to work on Npgsql 4 years ago, just after I finished my CS graduation course. What motivated me was the possibility to implement a network communication protocol and to have something done to community. I'm a big fan of OpenSource philosophy, better, I'm passionate about OpenSource and community, and realized I didn't return anything to it up to now. Besides that, I wanted to make part of it.

So, I started sending a message to postgresql mailling list asking if there was something about that being worked on. I received some replies about nothing being done yet and one saying that a p/invoke based proof of concept was tested. I wanted to implement postgresql communication protocol so I started to work on it. Some time later, I sent another message talking about project launch. At that time, Dave Page, from pgAdmin, jumped the wagon and started to help me get project going. I couldn't believe it! Dave Page, who later I discovered didn't play only with pgAdmin but also with postgresql installer and postgresql itself and others, was helping me with my just-started project! Thank you, Dave!

Since then, we have been working on a lot of features to make Npgsql work as best as possible. We have made a lot of progress and today Npgsql is a big success. One thing which make me think we were in the right direction was an invitation from Daniel Morgan, of Mono Project, to make Npgsql available in Mono sources. This made Npgsql become part of a bigger project and I'm very happy this happened. You guys, rock! Thanks for believing in the project.

I learned a lot about opensource on all those years working with Npgsql. I also knew a lot of very nice people, here in my country, Brazil, and throughout the world. I think this is the biggest reward I received for all this work. It is an experience I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

I would like to thank, firstly, God for allowing all this to happen and all people who helped me and the project to become what it is today! Without your help this won't be possible. I'd like to give special thanks to Josh Cooley, who have been doing a great job helping me to organize and give Npgsql the right direction and Hiroshi Saito who is helping us to spread the word of Npgsql in Japan! Dave Page for all his guidance and support. Guys and gals at gborg and pgfoundry who hosted Npgsql. Thank you!

(Note: I will edit this post later to add the name of all developers who helped Npgsql. I will search my mail archives to get your names and make sure I don't forget anyone)


For the future, we will be working on new ado.net 2.0 features and integration with visual studio.net. We will work on better performance and feature completeness. There is a lot of work to do and we will count on community feedback to make it even better! Stay tuned!


Thank you all

Francisco Figueiredo Jr.
Npgsql Lead Developer

Npgsql 1.0RC3 released!

Hi all,

Npgsql 1.0 RC3 is released!

Download it here

This release fixes some critical bugs with concurrent connection stablishment and "This stream does not support seek operation" error when sending a query. Please, have a look at release notes here for more information about there errors.

We are almost finished with 1.0. We hope to have a 1.0 final really soon so we can get 100% concentration on ado.net 2.0 features.