From: Thomas Heinen <cochi@...>
Date: 2002-03-13T05:15:02+09:00
Subject: [ANN] Ruby dataquery shell (RDQS) 0.3.3


Hi everybody out there... :)

RDQS (Ruby DataQuery Shell) version 0.3.3 was released

RDQS is a commandline-based shell for querying various datasources
(the only implemented one are SQL databases as of now). It provides
some features other database shells do not have. Some of them are:
Multi connect ability, multiple databases supported (all from the
Ruby/DBI package), colored output, shortcuts, connection bookmarks 
and many more. Look below in section "Features" for details.


URL:
====

 http://rdqs.sourceforge.net/


New since last release:
=======================

 - Dozends of bugfixes [also serious ones]. 
   This version should be a lot more stable than the previous ones
   after I took the time of going through the sources line-by-line,
   adding several more nil-catchers

 - More colored output (if rdqs.colors.use is set to true)

 - Updated documentation

 - Support for \commit and \rollback

 - An output module which dumps your query as INSERT statements

 - Shortcuts + batches can now have parameters
   So you can write your own "mini programs" for often used statements

 - Improved parsers
   ... which now should work more consistently


Notes:
======

 - In CVS there are already three bugfixes, but they're not critical 
   thus I will -not- make a pl1-release this time (I hope so... :)

    1)    Interbase + ADO DBDs are "broken", they do not return a 
          Rows Processed Count (RPC) but a nil-value. This causes
          strange result. This is fixed in CVS. Upgrade, if you use
          Interbase or ADO
    2)    The variable overview "$?" was broken
    3)    RDQS crashed when asking for structure information about an
          inexisting table
  
 - CVS provides more up-to-date documentation in Docbook, HTML, text and
   Postscript formats


Features:
=========

 - Support of all databases within Ruby/DBI package

 - Choosable output format [Table, CSV, XML (2 types), SQL]

 - Configuration files

 - History-on-disk

 - Paging (configurable threshold, usage and command)

 - Multiple connects simultaneously (Switchable with \1 .. \99)

 - "Connection bookmarking" via a data-sources.xml file

 - Syntax-/Outputcoloring (only partial as of now)

 - Shortcuts with parameters such as:
       @numrows (Number of rows in table) = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $1"

 - Watch-command:
       \watch @myshortcut 10

 - Backtick operator for shell interaction:
       SELECT phone FROM employees WHERE login="`cat fired.txt`"

 - Output redirection / piping / forwarding:
       "SELECT * FROM table" CSV> file.csv
       "SELECT * FROM table" CSV| awk -F, '{ print $1 }' > ids.txt
       "SELECT * FROM table" XML> host.foo.bar:12345

 - Batchfiles (also with parameters)
       \input sqlbatch.txt


Dependencies:
=============

 - Ruby       1.7.x   (1.6 series produces some crashes until now)
 - Readline extension (Should come along with Ruby)
 - Ruby/DBI           (Tested with 0.0.12)
 - REXML/NQXML        (Only if you want "connection bookmarks")


   

Please note that this is beta-level software, I don't recommend using it 
on productive databases. If you find a bug, please try first if CVS 
version has already a fix in it.

Bug reports, suggestions and feature requests are welcome


Thanks for reading,
    Thomas Heinen