[PgPy] ANN: PL/Py 0.1 Development Release

[James William Pye]

After much hacking, and many liters of caffeinated beverages, it is my
pleasure to announce the first development release of PL/Py, the
PostgresPy Project[1]'s Backend elements for the PostgreSQL ORDBMS.

The project news item can be found here[2].

PL/Py, PostgresPy's Backend Project, is a procedural language extension
for PostgreSQL, and a Python extension module providing Python
interfaces to PostgreSQL internals. It provides a PostgreSQL DBA with
the necessary functionality to create and execute functions written in
Python within the backend.

It has been designed with the principle of seperating the embedding
instance from the extension module(internal interfaces), so as to
provide a very clean implementation.

The PL features the following:
 * Set Returning Functions.
 * State keeping (think generators, etc, yes even for SRFs!).
 * Type system interface (Single dimensional arrays and Composites).
 * Direct Database Function Calls.
 * Objectified Queries.
 * Exception management and interfaces.
 * Encoding Choregraphy (Works with the Database's encoding).
 * HeapTuple/TupleDesc interface types.
 * Transaction Dictionary.
 * Direct Portal interface.
 * Internal Subtransactions.
 * file like Large Object interface.
 * Full tracebacks and exception information in uncaught exceptions.
 * Procedure validation (Syntax check on CREATE and Code storage).
 * Direct Relation interface (coming soon).
 * Boogs. Yes, there are bugs.

For the quickest way to get started, see the Quick Start page[3].

The documentation for this project has yet to be completed. Some
doc-strings exist, so using the sandbox mentioned in the Quick Start is
the best way to discover the features of the PL.

[1] http://python.projects.postgresql.org
[2] http://pgfoundry.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=449
[3] http://python.projects.postgresql.org/quick.html