Glom 1.4.0 is out. Glom is an easy-to-use database system, which is gradually becoming more useful. It’s already available in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty, not yet final) [1] thanks to Daniel Holbach and Martin Pitt.
New features in Glom 1.4
- Self-hosting: Databases can now be created in a local directory, without the pain of configuring a central PostgreSQL server. PostreSQL is still used to host the database on your local computer. You may, for instance, send an archive of this directory in an email. PostgreSQL is therefore now a non-optional dependency.
In future, a client-only version of Glom might be available for embedded devices. - Details view:
- Related Records: Allow viewing of doubly-related records.
- A vertical scrollbar now allows the window to be smaller when necessary on your screen.
- List View: Now supports static text items, static pictures, and script buttons, as the Details view already did.
- Field Formatting: Allow the user to remove a previously-chosen Also Show field.
- Translations: Added Import and Export buttons, so you can use the standard .po format.
- Calculated Fields and Button Scripts: Now uses Python syntax highlighting, via GtkSourceView.
- Added a Script Library to the Developer menu, for Python code that should be reused (via Import) in several scripts.
- Added –debug_sql commmand-line option, which prints out the generated SQL commands.
Thanks to Johannes Schmid, Armin Burgmeier, Dodji Seketeli, L Davison, bugzilla, Openismus, and me.
Features planned for Glom 1.6
If they are finished in the next six months:
- Drag-and-drop layout editing.
- Relationships Overview.
- Locking, when multiple users access the same record.
- Port to libgda 3.0.
More details of the development plans are online.
[1] Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper) has Glom 1.0, and Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) has Glom 1.2. Both should be updated to their latest upstream Glom 1.0.x or 1.2.x versions to fix crashes, but there is still no way for me, a fully-FOSS-compliant software vendor, to deploy bug fix updates to my software on Ubuntu. Using a different .deb repository does not seem to be an acceptable solution.
Glom 1.4.2 is available for Fedora 7 (rawhide).
i can’t say how much i appreciate all your efforts to make something that can be used with such a powerful backend as Postgresql. Especially for us MSAccess non-database-developers who can’t program anything in SQL.
Hopefully it will be able to take advantage of more and more things that Posgre supports. Please consider suggesting your program to be supported by Linspire/Freespire (so they can include it in the CNR (Click N Run) technology . i think it’s going to be the best or one of the best gui for Postgre. Thanks again and keep up the great work!
Fred, thanks. Are there particular Postgres features that you are interested in? Note that Glom isn’t really meant to be just a way to tweak things in your non-Glom Postgres database.
Murray… thanks for the question above…
i don’t know enough about postgres to go around “tweaking” things in it. After trying to use Glom i have particular Glom features that i’d like/appreciate to see…
1. When creating a relationship from an existing table, it would be nice to be able to select the type of relationship… one-to-many, many-to-many (does anybody use/need a one-to-one?). The wizard “creates” a relationship, but i can’t for the life of me tell what kind it is and haven’t been able to get it to work yet.
2. It would be nice to have some sort of separate Create Form wizard. i don’t know if the problems i’m having when i place fields on my main form and then select and place fields from the related table on the main form and then try to input data and fail are caused by my not creating the fields and their placemente correctly or because the tables are not properly related.
As far as what little i can see i am happy with the features that Glom includes from Postgre. i see that you are working on allowing record locking so that several users can access the db at the same time. Wow! That will really be fabulous!
i’ve lost the location of the Bug reporting page so that i can upload another .glom file so you can look at it. i’ll keep looking.
Have a great evening! :)
> When creating a relationship from an existing table, it would be nice to be able to select the type of relationship… one-to-many, many-to-many
If you use it in a related records portal then it will be one-to-many, as long as the to-field is not unique (such as a primary key). If you use it as a single related field then it will be one-to-one. I don’t see much benefit in enforcing that in the relationship definition.
> (does anybody use/need a one-to-one?).
No, that would be silly.
> It would be nice to have some sort of separate Create Form wizard.
Johannes Schmid (from Openismus) is working on drag-and-drop layout for the details layout. That should make it much easier. The nasty tree dialog that’s there now is just a temporary implementation.