June 2018: Upcoming Changes

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Several important changes are coming that we think will benefit Figaro and Berkeley DB enthusiasts over the next couple of months.

Endpoint Systems NuGet Gallery

As of this writing, you are now able to go to the new Endpoint Systems NuGet Gallery to download Berkeley DB and Figaro NuGet packages. This change allows us to remove the licensing system from the distribution, which nearly everyone found to be a hindrance. In order to maintain licensing compliance with Oracle, however, several conditions are in place:

  • You must sign in before you can download a package
  • Customer information will be shared with Oracle
  • You'll have to manually download packages

This also means no more packages in Nuget.org.

We're in the process of setting up a mailing list so that interested parties can sign up for product updates etc. by email.

Berkeley DB for .NET and .NET Core

We're happy to announce that licensing for Berkeley DB for .NET developers! Over the next couple of days you will see a package available for Berkeley DB version 2018, which is the latest version released a couple of days ago. We're in the process of revamping all of the Berkeley DB documentation to include C#-specific samples in order to ease the development process. We're also posting sample code in our GitHub repository - check it out at https://github.com/endpointsystems . We've been working with Oracle on fixing some issues with the .NET Core port, but once we have those nailed down there it should be available in the NuGet portal. Currently there's a .NET Core version in there, but some of the functionality does not work (which is why it's tagged as a beta).

Berkeley DB XML for .NET and .NET Core

We're fully intending to provide the "Oracle version" of Berkeley DB XML to .NET and .NET Core developers. Figaro is a collection of wrapper objects written in C++/CLI, which is a fantastic interop layer between .NET and C++; unfortunately, this interop layer won't be available for the other OS platforms, so we're going to move into the SWIG P/Invoke model used by Berkeley DB.

The prevailing strategy

Our intention with these moves is to help foster Berkeley DB adoption among the .NET ecosphere. The Berkeley DB product line is a great database engine for .NET developers looking for high performance without the 'pay for play' limitations imposed on developers by cloud and other server-side providers. We hope you'll take the time to go to our NuGet server and evaluate today!