Rekall: A Persona, Programmable DBMS System for KDE

theKompany.com is pleased to announce the Technology Preview Release (TPR) of Rekall, a persona, programmable DBMS system for KDE.

The objective of this TPR was to show a working implementation that illustrates the concepts of where the project is going. With Rekall you will be able to quickly and easily build database applications using Rekall forms and reports. A full complement of widgets means that applications built in Rekall will be able to have the look and feel of any other application. Rekall applications can be extended in their functionality to perform virtually any task via embedded Python as a scripting language.

This first release does not include the Python layer. Ever since the release of dBase many years ago, the idea of a programmable DBMS has become increasingly popular. Major systems have been written in applications like Paradox and MS Access. By focusing on the database, users are able to leverage their business knowledge into working applications. One of the limitations of the aforementioned products is that their native database didn't scale well or support multiple users very well.

Rekall avoids this problem by dispensing with a native database. theKompany.com developed an abstracted data access layer called KDE-DB in late 2000 specifically to address this database concept. KDE-DB is a layer into which plugins can be inserted to support different SQL database servers. Rekall uses KDE-DB to access whatever database is needed. So instead of supplying a native database format, we've supplied a default database format that is meant to be light weight, easy to use and require no RDBMS experience. This uses common dBase format via an interface which provides SQL functionality. This means that you can immediately start creating applications to test with, and then scale up as required.

KDE-DB has plug ins for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix, Oracle, and soon DB2. Most of the details for the project roadmap can be found at www.thekompany.com/projects/rekall, but this is subject to change as we are constantly researching new features. The files in this first release are a mixture of source and rpm's and is meant for the person that isn't afraid to modify makefiles and compile some code.

Please read the instructions on the download page. Thanks once again to our friends at Sourceforge for hosting the download files, discussion forum and tracking system at www.sourceforge.net/projects/rekall. theKompany is working with the KDE team to provide an implementation of Rekall as part of Koffice. There will be a 'standard' edition that will be bundled, and advanced feature plug-ins available for sale from theKompany for those of you who want or need the extra features.