Hi, I'm pleased to announce the first alpha release (I could call it a "developer's preview", but then I don't wear a suit) of HDBC. HDBC is the Haskell Database Connectivity library. It is patterned after Perl's DBI. I wrote it from scratch -- this is not a reimplementation of HSQL -- because several design decisions in HSQL have been causing me trouble. I am also announcing the first alpha release of the Sqlite3 backend driver for HDBC. I anticipate writing backend drivers for the same databases HSQL supports (though probably not Sqlite2), but it should be easier for others to write HDBC drivers as well. To answer a potential FAQ, HDBC does not attempt to do what HaskellDB does, though HDBC could potentially replace HSQL as the underlying layer of choice in HaskellDB. I'm including the README below, which goes into a bit more detail. To get HDBC: darcs get --partial http://darcs.complete.org/hdbc To get the Sqlite3 driver: darcs get --partial http://darcs.complete.org/hdbc-sqlite3 Welcome to HDBC, Haskell Database Connectivity. HDBC is modeled loosely on Perl's DBI interface, though it has also been influenced by Python's DB-API v2, JDBC in Java, and HSQL in Haskell. Features of HDBC ---------------- HDBC provides an abstraction layer between Haskell programs and SQL relational databases. This lets you write database code once, in Haskell, and have it work with any number of backend SQL databases (MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, ODBC-compliant databases, etc.) HDBC is a from-scratch effort. It is not a reimplementation of HSQL, though its purpose is the same. Some features HDBC has which HSQL lacks include: * Ability to use replacable parameters to let one query be executed multiple times (eliminates the need for an "escape" function) * Ability to access returned rows by column number * Ability to read data from the SQL server on-demand rather than reading the entire result set up front * HUnit testsuite for each backend driver * Well-defined standard API and easy backend driver implementation Features on the TODO list which will appear shortly include: * Support for translation between Haskell and SQL types * Lazy reading of the entire result set (think hGetContents, but for the results of SELECT) * Support for querying metadata (column names, types, etc.) * Additional infrastructure for querying database server properties * Add-on package to integrate with MissingH (filesystem in a database, backend for AnyDBM, etc.) HDBC Drivers ------------ The following HDBC drivers exist: Sqlite v3, darcs get --partial http://darcs.complete.org/hdbc-sqlite3 More will be coming shortly. -- John Goerzen December 20, 2005