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ANNOUNCING

eGenix.com mxODBC Database Interface

Version 3.0.0

Our commercially supported Python extension providing ODBC database connectivity to Python applications on Windows and Unix platforms

This announcement is also available on our web-site for online reading: http://www.egenix.com/company/news/eGenix-mxODBC-Distribution-3.0-GA.html

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ABOUT

The mxODBC Database Interface allows users to easily connect Python applications to just about any database on the market today - on both Windows and Unix platforms in a highly portable and convenient way. This makes mxODBC the ideal basis for writing cross-platform database programs and utilities in Python.

mxODBC is included in the eGenix.com mxODBC Distribution for Python, a commercial part of the eGenix.com mx Extension Series, a collection of professional quality software tools which enhance Python's usability in many important areas such as ODBC database connectivity, fast text processing, date/time processing and web site programming.

The package has proven its stability and usefulness in many mission critical applications and various commercial settings all around the world.

* About Python: Python is an object-oriented Open Source programming language which runs on all modern platforms (http://www.python.org/). By integrating ease-of-use, clarity in coding, enterprise application connectivity and rapid application design, Python establishes an ideal programming platform for todays IT challenges.

* About eGenix: eGenix is a consulting and software product company focused on providing professional quality services and products to Python users and developers (http://www.egenix.com/).

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NEWS

mxODBC 3.0 has received a large number of enhancements and supports more ODBC drivers than ever.

Some highlights:

* mxODBC has been ported to Python 2.5.

* We've worked a lot on the Unicode support and made it more robust, especially on Unix platforms where the ODBC Unicode support has stabilized over the last few years. You can now issue commands using Unicode and exchange Unicode data with the database in various configurable ways.

* We've also added a methods to give you more control of the connections and cursors as well as the .callproc() method for calling stored procedures that mxODBC 2.0 was missing.

* Multiple result sets via the .nextset() are also supported, so working with stored procedures should be a lot easier now.

* Another highlight is the added support for Python's datetime module types and the option to use strings for date/time processing (e.g. to be able to use timezones in timestamps if that's supported by the database).

* Python's decimal module is now supported as well and it's possible to configure mxODBC to return Decimal types for numeric values.

* mxODBC 3.0 received full 64-bit support, so that you can run mxODBC (and all other mx Extensions) on e.g. AMD64 platforms.

* We've switched from the old distutils wininst installer to the new MSI installer for the Windows Python 2.5 build. This gives you a lot more options for automatic installs, including unattended installs. See http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/msi/ for details.

Note that in order to avoid confusion, we've decided to rename the eGenix.com mx Commercial Distribution to eGenix.com mxODBC Distribution with this release. The commercial distribution has always only contained the mxODBC package, so this was an obvious step to clarify things for our users.

As always we are providing pre-compiled versions of the package for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris as well as sources which allow you to install the package on all other supported platforms.

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DOWNLOADS

The download archives and instructions for installing the package can be found at:

http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBC/

IMPORTANT: In order to use the eGenix mx Commercial package you will first need to install the eGenix mx Base package which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxBase/

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UPGRADING

Please note that mxODBC 2.0 does not support Python 2.5 on 64-bit platforms due to the Py_ssize_t changes in the Python C API.

You are encouraged to upgrade to the new mxODBC 3.0 release, if you plan to deploy on 64-bit platforms and use Python 2.5 as basis for your applications.

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LICENSES & COSTS

This release brings you all the new features and enhancements in mxODBC that were previously only available in through our mxODBC Zope Database Adapter.

Like the Zope product, mxODBC now requires that you install a license in order to use it.

You can request 30-day evaluation licenses by writing to sales@egenix.com, stating your name (or the name of the company) and the number of eval licenses that you need. We will then issue you licenses and send them to you by email.

Please make sure that you can receive ZIP file attachments on the email you specify in the request, since the license files are send out as ZIP attachements.

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SUPPORT

Commercial support for these packages is available from eGenix.com. Please see

http://www.egenix.com/services/support/

for details about our support offerings.