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Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 18:04:16 +0300 (EEST)
From: Henri Bergius <Henri.Bergius@iki.fi>
Subject: MWS for 8th of September, 1999 (#15)
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, chris@linuxdev.net, deb@linuxchix.org

Greetings!

This has been a week of intense work for
most in the Midgard team. We had a new
release in last Friday, and the mailing 
list and Midgard's Web site have both
experienced lots of growth in volume.

The overall status of the project seems
to be quite good, and the pace of development
healthy. We have been so far focusing on
the 'classic' (MySQL-dependent) Midgard 
series, working on some new and urgently
needed features. When those are complete, 
the work on ODBC and modularization of the 
database related functions will begin.

But now to the headlines, which are quite 
development-oriented this week...

============================
----------------------------

Current versions:
	Stable: 1.2.1 (Mad King)
	Devel.: 1.3 

----------------------------
============================

Midgard 1.2.1 released

Jukka Zitting released the latest of Midgard's
stable 'Mad King' series, version 1.2.1

This new version contains some bug fixes,
and minor feature improvements. The requested
support for cleartext passwords is also present,
as is the possibility of compiling Midgard
to Apache as a static module.

Our distribution system seems to be functioning
quite nicely. Only some hours after the actual
release we already started getting reports in
of successful installations. The binaries (Red
Hat and Mandrake) were also released quite
soon afterwards. Good work, everyone!

You can find the 1.2.1 release on Midgard's
download page:

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/download/

----------------------------

Improved Access Control

A feature that many Midgard users seem to
need is a better way of controlling access
to different parts of the database.

Currently Midgard mostly controls permissions
for modifying material, leaving the rest for
user-developed PHP applications. This of course
isn't the ideal way to do things, and we ought
to work on a better access controlling system.

Midgard developer Emile Heyns posted his view
on the matter to Midgard's mailing list. Jukka
approved the idea so this will probably find
itself to one of the development versions in
the near future.

  -> http://www.progressive-comp.com/Lists/?l=midgard&m=93665655506800&w=2

----------------------------

Midgard File Format

Following a proposal drafted by me, Jukka
created a plan for Midgard's own file format.

The file format would be used for distributing
parts of a Midgard datebase between different
servers, and would be good for exchanging
applications, content, or layout.

I personally feel that such a file format
and its accompanying package management system
will be an important component needed for
Midgard's further development, and that the
plans we have for it currently will make it
a good and functional part of the Midgard way
of creating Web sites.

In a nutshell the package format would be
XML files describing Midgard database structures
packed together by tar and gzip.

For those interested about it, the email
I sent on the subject is available in the
mailing list archives.

  -> http://www.progressive-comp.com/Lists/?l=midgard&m=93635619115228&w=2
  
----------------------------

Future of Midgard's ID fields

The package management system mentioned above
was approved by Midgard's lead developer Jukka 
Zitting.

Of course, before such a system could be
developed, some obstacles for easy replication
of data between different Midgard servers must
be removed.

The most important of these is the way Midgard
uses ID fields for queries.

To solve this problem, Jukka has posted a
plan to the mailing list:

  -> http://www.progressive-comp.com/Lists/?l=midgard&m=93669491003410&w=2

============================ 
============================

About Midgard

Midgard is a freely-available Web application 
development and publishing platform based on 
the popular PHP scripting language. It is an 
Open Source development project, giving you the 
freedom to create your solutions in an open 
environment. Midgard is the tool for creating, 
modifying and maintaining dynamic 
database-enabled web services.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org

----------------------------

About MWS

The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter 
for the Midgard user and developer community.

The MWS is currently being distributed in
following mediums:

 -The Midgard Project's Web site
   -> http://www.midgard-project.org

 -Linux Weekly News
   -> http://www.lwn.net

 -Linux Developer's Network
   -> http://linuxdev.net

 -Open Source Writers Group
   -> http://www.thepuffingroup.com/oswg

 -Midgard mailing list

If you would like to release it elsewhere,
please contact Henri Bergius 
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi).

Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can 
be found archived at the Midgard web site.
  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html

============================

/Bergie

-- 
-- Henri Bergius -- +358 40 525 1334 -- Henri.Bergius@iki.fi --
               http://www.iki.fi/Henri.Bergius