Re: www.pgaccess.org - the official story (the way I saw it) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Hi everybody,

I think, that our "job" is to help this project to grow up to fit the 
needs of the people that are using it. In the last months I didn't 
notice any activity around it. And there are real expectations that are 
still unsatisfied.

This project really needs the fresh air. I think, to have the 
pgaccess.org is something good, and we shold make this whole thing work.

So let's do it!

Let's take the last stable release, let's apply the patches, and let's 
put it on the pgaccess.org, where everybody can reach it easily. If we 
find some other patches we can easily apply them too.
The source is very "readable", not too complicated, even as a beginner 
in tcl I was able to make useful changes. Congratulations to Teo, he 
did a very good job.

To have an enthusiastic group of developers around the pgaccess is good 
for the postgres teem too.

Once again: LET'S DO IT!

Levi.

P.S: In the near future I'm planning to make the hungarian translation 
too.

On 2002.05.09 22:24 Iavor Raytchev wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> The last message of Chris helped me a lot.
> 
> Let me give a short summary why do we (www.pgaccess.org) do what we
> do.
> 
> What are the motives behind and what is the goal.
> 
> My company needed pgaccess exactly because of the nice visual
> 'schema'. The
> 'schema', however, did not behave well if you give it 20-30 tables, so
> we
> asked Teo if he plans to patch this. The last official update on the
> site of
> Teo is from January 2001. Since then - if there have been patches,
> they have
> remained somehow unannounced. Teo said he has no time and we fixed it.
> We
> sent Teo patches several times and he came back with the following
> e-mail -
> 
> > From: Constantin Teodorescu [mailto:teo@flex.ro]
> > Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 11:16 PM
> > To: Iavor Raytchev
> > Cc: Boyan Dzambazov; bartus.l@bitel.hu; cmaj@freedomcorpse.info
> > Subject: Re: Future PgAccess development
> >
> > Dear Iavor, Boyan, Bartus, Chris
> >
> > I am writing to you all because in the last days I have received
> from
> > all of you different patches and enhancements to PgAccess:
> >
> > - Iavor & Boyan in schema module
> > - Bartus in function handling
> > - Chris in report module
> >
> > Thank you all for your work and for developing PgAccess.
> >
> > For the moment, it's impossible to me to receive patches, maintain
> and
> > push a new version (0.99) of PgAccess. I am involved in a lot of
> other
> > projects and I have no free time.
> >
> > Furthermore, I am not familiar with the CVS and I have no free time
> to
> > learn something new right now.
> >
> > I ask you to join your efforts, to exchange between all of you the
> > patches that you have done and to try to set up a web site where
> > PgAccess development could continue in future. I don't know anything
> > about Sourceforge but it seems that they do such a thing. I want to
> stay
> > close to the discussions concerning the future of PgAccess and I
> want to
> > contribute with ideas, suggestions. But I feel that I will have no
> time
> > to build up a new release and I think that your enhancements should
> be
> > included in the next PostgreSQL release.
> >
> > I have also some changes in the query builder in order to support
> the
> > outer and inner join capabilities in PostgreSQL 7.x. but they are
> not
> > finished.
> >
> > Another important thing will be the changes that have to be done in
> > order to support table (row) editing without OID's because 7.2.x
> > versions allow table creation without OID's and table viewing is not
> > working any more.
> >
> > Thank you all , I'm waiting for your answers,
> >
> > Teo
> 
> 
> To sum it up -
> 
> -> pgaccess has not been officially updated since January 2001
> 
>    = there is no real interest in it or the interest is not public
> 
> -> the author has no time
> 
>    = the project has no leader
> 
> -> there are several people actively working on it
> 
>    = there is some interest
> 
> -> the author gives us the chance to bring life
> 
>    = if we like it we must get it
> 
> 
> So we did.
> 
> We took the www.pgaccess.org domain (on the name of Teo). We set up a
> server. And we started searching for the latest pgaccess versioin to
> insert
> it into the cvs.
> 
> First I thought Teo should have the latest version. He said - no, it
> should
> be with the PostgreSQL distribution. I went there, but it did not seem
> very
> fresh. Then I continued my investigation and wrote to the
> webmaster@postgresql.org - my goal was to really find all patches and
> intersted people and to bring the project to some useful place. Vince
> Vielhaber wrote back that I should ask the HACKERS.
> 
> 
> So I did.
> 
> And now we are here.
> 
> We heard a lot of opinions from different sides.
> 
> I would make the following summary -
> 
> 1] During the last 1 year there has not been an active interest in
> and/or
> development of pgaccess. Or if it has been - it has not been very
> official.
> 
> 2] Currently there are at least four people who actively need pgaccess
> and
> write for it - Bartus, Chris, Boyan and myself.
> 
> 3] To talk about pgaccess without talking about PostgreSQL is a
> nonsense -
> pgaccess has one purpose and this is PostgreSQL.
> 
> 4] PostgreSQL is too much bigger than pgaccess (organizationwize) -
> the
> proximity kills pgaccess. PostgreSQL is PostgreSQL. It is great -
> that's why
> we spent so much time trying to do something about it. Bug pgaccess is
> not
> PostgreSQL - it is one of the great tools around PostgreSQL and must
> be
> independent.
> 
> 5] gborg is a mess (I hope I do not hurt anybody's feelings) - just
> see the
> broken images on first page that have not been fixed for at least
> several
> days. And the missing search. I have been searching in gborg for
> pgaccess
> several times - and I could not find it. I have the feeling that
> before
> gborg there was a very pretty postgresql.org style page with the
> projects -
> what happened to it?
> 
> 
> PROPOSAL
> 
> What pgaccess needs is some fresh air - it needs a small and fresh
> team. It
> needs own web site, own cvs, own mailing list. So that the people who
> love
> it, write for it and really need it can be easy to identify and to
> talk to.
> This will not break its relationship to PostgreSQL in any way (see 3]
> above)
> 
> 
> At the end - I am not experienced how decisions are taken in an open
> source
> community - I have no idea what is next.
> 
> May be one can write a summary what are the bad sides of the above
> proposal.
> And if there are no such really - we should just proceed and have this
> nice
> tool alive and running.
> 
> Thanks everybody,
> 
> Iavor
> 
> --
> www.pgaccess.org
> 
>