Raible Designs

AppFuse 1.3 Released!

This release fixes a few compatibility issues with Resin and other databases - specifically PostgreSQL and DB2. The major new functionality in this release is Easy Database Switching. Basically, you can very easily switch from using MySQL to PostgreSQL by only changing a few properties in your build.properties. I implemented this on my current project last week because I do most of my development (at the client) on a PowerBook. The client wants to deploy onto a DB2 database - and there is not DB2 install for the Mac. Since Hibernate allows you to easily switch between databases, I figured I could develop using MySQL on the Mac, but have the default (CVS version) use DB2. One of the things I didn't want to do was to have a build.properties.sample, because I love projects that "just work" when you type "ant". So I changed the the build process so that database.properties is generated from default settings (MySQL) or the settings in build.properties (if specified). As part of the build process, Ant looks for the following build.properties files:

• ${user.home}/.${ant.project.name}-build.properties
• ${user.home}/.build.properties
• build.properties

What this allows you to do is to take your customized database settings and put them in ~/.build.properties and they'll be applied to any AppFuse-derived project. This makes it easy to keep the CVS version of your project tied to one database and a developer's local version tied to a different database.

While it's true that you'll most likely only talk to one database during the duration of your project, this exercise proves that it's easy to migrate from MySQL to another database. It also proves that AppFuse can easily integrate with other database (at least as of this release). Slick stuff IMO.

• Download (~12.1 MB for src, ~4.3 MB for bin)
• Release Notes

One of the best parts about developing AppFuse is that it's not a library. As a developer, I don't really have to concern myself with backwards compatibility. This means that new functionality can be added quickly and easily and old stuff can be ripped out. It's too bad all OS "products" can be this easy.

What about AppFuse's future? Check out the AppFuse Roadmap to see what I'm thinking about.