Cocoa and ODBC

Its being a long time I have not come here to write... and it has been a long journey since a nice tool come to the desktop to connect a relational database with Cocoa (inside OSX). Since the introduction of the Core Data framework, some years after the deprecation of Objective-C version of EOF, it became a bit of a nightmare to connect an app to a Relational Data Base (as may be Sybase or Oracle)... some attempts to rewrite EOF has been done, e.g. in Alex' Open EOF by Martin

The aim of this new attempt is to use the following mixture: The Odbc Framework is a Cocoa framework providing access to ODBC data sources. It works on top of the iODBC Framework which is a widely portable C-oriented framework that follows the ODBC specification (Open Database Connectivity). The Odbc Framework includes a Cocoa Core Data Persistent Store for Odbc, which will be used here. And finally, we will use as persistence the proposed database Mimer SQL  (: which has a free version for developers :)

Tiger Server on my Aluminum MacBook

I am glad to say that (finally) I found a way to run Tiger Server on my aluminum MacBook... I do so via VMware Fusion 3...

It seems that Apple explicitly forbids to virtualise the "user" version of their legacy OSes, but NO the server version of them... surprisingly, Parallels do not implement such a possibility while VMware does...

That is a good reason —at least to me— to go, from now on, with VMware instead of parallels.

Once the server was installed, can we hack it to run also the "user" version?
Let us try...

(I'll be back with more on the subject later ;^)

OpenStep 4.2 on Leopard via Parallels 4

I am glad to say that it is possible install and run OpenStep 4.2 on my Aluminum MacBook (Leopard 7) via Parallels 4. Here are the step-by-step instructions to do so.

0. download the floppy-images from Apple's support area
1. change the extension of such images from .floppyimage to .fdd
2. insert the OPENSTEP_4.2 install CD. It will not be recognised by Leopard... simply ignore that.
3. run Parallels (4.0.3844) and click on the menu File>New Virtual Machine...
4. skip detection
5. select "type: other"... (continue)
6. select "custom"...
7. assign 64 Mb of RAM (this is enough and can be change later)...
8. select "New image file"...
9. assign a size of 2.0 Gb and select "Plain disk"...
10. (I do not know yet how to handle network... I used the default)...
11. I used "Virtual machine"...
12. give a name to your machine (e.g., OpenStep 4.2); in "More Options" you can share it...
13. create the machine... start.

at first it will not boot since you have to
14. click on the menu Devices>Floppy Disk>Connect image... and double-click on 4.2_Install_Disk.fdd
15. click on the menu Virtual Machine>Reset

you may recognise at this point the OPENSTEP boot1... wait for the installer to start.

16. select language and keyboard...
17. confirm installation...
18. click on menu Devices>Floppy Disk>Connect image... and double-click on 4.2_Driver_Disk.fdd
19. press Return

here comes the tricky part
20. select the "EIDE and ATAPI Device Controller (v4.01)" to control the CD-ROM; for, press: 7 return 7 return 6 return
21. do the same for the Hard Disk... 7 R 7 R 6 R
22. continue (i.e., press 1 return)

from there, the rest is as usual:
23. 1 R 1 R 1 R (unless you want to do something fancy)...

The next step is to figure out how to get a better resolution, sound and network... let's try!!

No Tiger on my Aluminum MacBook

I cannot be live it... there is no version of Tiger which runs on my new MacBook Aluminum...

Sometimes Apple take decisions I really do not end to understand...

I had tried all small tricks I know, with out success... even tried Parallels 4, but it is explicitly forbidden to run Tiger on it...

shame on Apple

Alex's EOModeler

The good news about AJRDatabase is that the compiled version at SourceForge simply runs on Leopard. For, simply copy the EOModeler application to your ~/Developer/Applications folder, the AJRFoundation, AJRInterface, EOAccess and EOControl frameworks to your ~/Library/Frameworks folder, and the Postgres eoadaptor to your ~/Library/Database Adaptors folder... if you have a running Postgres database, you will be able to connect and reverse engine it after double-clicking on Alex's tool.

Nice work!!!

Now I will need to find or develop a Sybase eoadaptor... I hope it is not another nightmare...

AJRDatabase; Leopard Vs. Tiger

More frustration...
the EOModeler of Alex was done in an old OS X version and uses some methods which had been deprecated in 10.4 (e.g., the NSFont method - (CGFloat)widthOfString:(NSString *)aString); even though it compile in Tiger, it does not in Leopard. So, I will have to debug his code and "repair" it before I can compile-and-run it into Leopard.

My PowerBook died

After fighting with the installation of GNUstep, and just before the national summit of combinatorics in Hermosillo, Sonora, my old Power Book suicide by dropping itself from my bed to the floor...
Since I had to give a talk during the summit, I'd run to the shop and bought a new Intel 2.4 MacBook. While reinstalling everything in it, I received a nice link in the EOF mail-list at omnigroup: GNUstepWeb.
A nice installer with compiled binaries for Tiger and Leopard can be found there at the time, and after an easy install procedure, an Xcode template for a web-app can be found by the new-project wizard... however I tried the link today but, either the server is down, or the page disappear, or something went wrong... so I decided to share the Leopard version in my public folder: MyGNUstepWeb.
The next step is to code a Sybase adaptor...

no GDL2 on macports

I was able to install all dependencies of GDL2, but GDL2 it self... macports was unable to load it from nowhere...
also, I'd try to run an app from gnustep (Grom to be precise) and it simply did not started...

...all this GNUstep thing was driving me crazy, so I went to my office at ENSA and start all over, but in my Tiger Server (10.4.11)... there the history was completely different: instead of using macports, I downloaded directly from GNUstep ftp server gnustep-make, gnustep-base and gnustep-dl2, apply a couple of patches provided by Adam Fedor (Mil Gracias ;^) and now GDL2 is installed...

NeXT Step: learn how to integrate it with Cocoa...

gcc42 done...

Finally, I got the desired:
---> Staging gcc42 into destroot
---> Installing gcc42 @4.2.4_1+darwin_7
---> Activating gcc42 @4.2.4_1+darwin_7
---> Cleaning gcc42
Fermat:/opt/local/var/macports sa$

In the meanwhile I found the following comment on the web:
>> ---> Building gcc42 with target all
>>
>> So all is going well until this line showed up and is taking absolute
>> age....what should I do? should I terminate it and try again?
>
> gcc42 takes about 6 hours to compile on a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4, so
> on your 1 GHZ PowerBook G4 I would expect it to take about 9 hours.
> You should also have at least 3GB of free hard drive space.
So, in my 400 MHz PowerBook G3 I supposed it will take forever... but it took just a finite amount of time!

Today I will try to end the installation of GDL2...