Kexi 0.9 beta 1 Announcement

DATELINE MAY 9, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kexi Team Ships Beta Release of Major Enhancements to Free Integrated Database Environment

May 9, 2005 (The INTERNET). The Kexi Team today announced the immediate availability of Kexi 0.9 beta 1, codenamed "Shorthorn", the newest release of the integrated environment for managing data.

Changes

(since 0.1 beta 5 version)

• Database forms are now officially supported
• Many improvements in handling server databases
• For users' convenience, Tabular Data View's behaviour is similar to Form Data View's behaviour
• Data and project migration from existing data sources (SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL)
• Import of Microsoft Access database files (MDB) is available as optional plugin.
• Tens of overall improvements and hundreds of bug fixes

See also Detailed information on changes and Screenshots.

Download

Kexi and its libraries are available free of charge under flexible Open Source license (LGPL). It can be obtained as  Linux/Unix source code from download.kde.org. See also Download section on Kexi web site.

More information

This release is separated from KOffice. You can also obtain version 0.8 beta1, which is released together with KOffice 1.4.

How to compile Kexi. To learn how to compile Kexi, see this document.

Support. Kexi users are invited to report bugs and wishes. This can be done by using the KDE Bug Tracking System.

Unsupported features. Updated list of unsupported features and known problems is also available.

News

New Developers on the Board! Three new software developers joined the Kexi Project:

• Martin Ellis who contributed with updated MySQL driver, KexiDB improvements and MDB (MS Access databases) support. The latter feature is highly expected by many users.
• Sebastian Sauer who contributed with excellent, well designed Scripting Module (KROSS) together with Python language bindings for KROSS. These features are planned as the subject of Kexi 1.0 release.
• Christian Nitschkowski who contributed with various forms' graphics effects, KInitiator (to be used in 1.0) and helper dialogs.

Jobs. "Ask not what Kexi can do for you, ask what you can do for Kexi". Kexi Team is looking for developers, and package maintainers (vide supported Linux distributions). Translators, testers, end-user and development documentation writers, and any other forms of support are also welcome. Contact the Team for more information.

Multiplatform Availability. Kexi on Linux (e.g. Debian) is available for many architectures, including 64-bit Intel/AMD and Apple PowerPC.

Features in progress. Scripting using Python language; CSV and Clipboard data import.

Sponsorship

Kexi is developed by Kexi Team - an international group of independent developers, with assistance and workforce coming from the OpenOffice Polska company.

About Kexi

Kexi is an integrated environment for managing data. It can be used for creating database schemas; inserting data; performing queries, and processing data. Forms can be created to provide a custom interface to your data. All database objects - tables, queries and forms - are stored in the database, making it easy to share databases.

As Kexi is a real member of the K Desktop Environment and KOffice projects, it integrates fluently into both on Linux/Unix. It is designed to be fully usable also without running KDE Desktop on Linux/Unix, MS Windows and Mac OS X platforms.

Kexi is considered as a long awaited Open Source competitor for MS Access, Filemaker and Oracle Forms. Its development is motivated by the lack of Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools for database systems that are sufficiently powerful, inexpensive, open standards driven and portable across many OSes and hardware platforms.

Trademark Notices. KDE and K Desktop Environment are trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.