JSqsh / News: Recent posts

Hi!

JSqsh 2.1 is now released! It is now moved to Github (I'm sorry SourceForge, you have been good to me!) and further information is available here:

https://github.com/scgray/jsqsh/wiki

JSqsh, the java version of the popular command line database query tool has reached version 1.4 (finally!). This version contains a sizeable number of features and bug fixes. The highlights are:

* Added new line input reader "JLine". This provides much of the command line editing functionality without the need for a native shared library.
* New command line options for reading additional configuration directories and driver definition files.
* New display styles "isql" and "vertical" to better follow the old sqsh behavior.
* Exit code now reflects the success or failure of the SQL executed, making jsqsh more usable for scripting.
* Added DB2 z/OS, H2, and IBM DB2 SQL Skin for Sybase driver definitions
* The "perfect" display style no longer limits total rows and instead samples ${perfect_sample_rows} rows before display to try to optimize the display style.
* Updated JNI build system to make it easier to build on Windows. As a result, a Windows 64bit build is now available.... read more

This version contains a sizeable number of bug fixes and the following new features:

* A driver definition (the drivers.xml) file may now contain a new <Property> tag to define properties that are to be passed into the driver at connect time.
* The DB2 driver now sets the retrieveMessagesFromServerOnGetMessage property. This results in actual usable error messages.
* The \call statement is now capable of displaying Oracle result sets produced from Oracle refcursors. This is done with the special ":r" argument placeholder. See "\help call" for details.
* The "perfect" display mode will now attempt to compact the display columns sufficiently tight to fit within the screen (only if jsqsh JNI is
available).
* History buffer numbers are now numbered oldest to newest, so that the buffer number for a given buffer will not change until the session ends or the buffer is removed from history.
* Added --repeat to \go, so that a query can be executed multiple times. During this execution the variable ${iteration} can be referred to within the query to determine which iteration of the repeat cycle the query is on (starting from 0).
* Added display style of "discard" that discards all rows. This is useful for performance testing.
* Added ${scale} and changed the definition of ${precision}. These two values now work together when displaying floating point values exactly as one would expect them to.
* Added ${querytime} configuration property to suppress display of query timing information.
* Added dist-sparc-sol build target. This provides a .tar.gz file that contains jsqsh and its JNI files. Currently this relies upon the build platform having readline-5.x installed
* Added support for SQLXML datatype
* Enabled support for "N" types, NVARCHAR(), NCHAR(), etc.

JSqsh is now available:

* Added new mechanism to \connect to allow a logical name to be assigned to a connection and persistently saved away so that the connection can be re-established in the future using only the name. This provides a cleaner mechanism for managing connections than the 'alias' command. Run "\help connect" for more details.
* Added session-to-session redirection, allowing the output of a command executed in one session to be executed by another session (or even re-executed by itself). See '\help redirection' for details.
* The \call command can now iterate through a CSV file and execute a prepared statement once for each line in the file, using the fields in the file as arguments to the procedure.
* Fixed handling of "bit" datatypes.
* Fixed ^C handling that I broke the last release.
* Fixed the \eval command aborting when it executes a command that causes a session switch, such as \session or \connect -n.
* Fixed "\connect -c" not finding classes that are specified in the ${classpath} jsqsh variable.
* Fixed OutOfMemoryError when processing the results of a backtick expression (e.g. \set x=`echo 1234`)

Version 1.1 is now available.

* Changed several aspects of command line options:
- All jsqsh options have a long form and a short form (e.g. -h and --help).
- You no longer need a space following an option (e.g. "-U sa" and "-Usa" are equivalent).
- Every jsqsh command accepts -h and --help to cause a usage of the command to be dumped.
- Every jsqsh command accepts -g and --gui to cause its output to be sent to a graphical popup window.
- The new help topic "options" discusses this.
* Added new display style "graphical" that will pop open a GUI window containing query results in a sortable graphical table.
* Added $window_size to control the size of the window in graphical display mode and $font to set the font that will be used.
* Added $nocount variable to turn off the display of rowcounts generated due to update/delete statements.
* Added \insert command, this displays the results of the current SQL query as INSERT statements or executes the INSERT statements in another session.
* Added \select command to generate select statements and joins from table definitions.
* Added \create command to generate CREATE TABLE statement from a table definition.
* Added \diff command to compare results from SQL executed across multiple session.
* Added \call command to execute a prepared statement. This command is primarily for debugging purposes.
* The \help command is now more organized.
* JSqsh is now better at determining if the session is interactive or non-interactive (i.e. if stdin has been redirected).
* Tab completion now recognizes the TSQL "use" statement.
* Display of "info" type SQLWarning's (e.g. the output from a "print" statement from Sybase and Microsoft) is improved.
* Fixed the -i flag causing jsqsh to exit if the script contained a \connect -n.
* Fixed failure when trying to format Oracle TIMESTAMP columns for display.
* Fixed \connect command trying to use settings from the current session when trying to connect. Read the \connect command for details.
* Fixed bug in PL/SQL parser that cause jsqsh to sit in tight loop eating CPU when parsing certain PL/SQL blocks.
* Fixed bug with way getUpdateCount() is being called that was causing Sybase's jConnect driver to complain.
* Updated driver definition to use the jConnect 6.x driver for Sybase

Version 1.0 is now available! The version includes:

* Tab completion now recognizes stored procedure execution requests and
will attempt to complete parameter names and procedure names.
* Added '-i' flag to GO to allow you to generate INSERT statements from a
result set.
* Added support for CLOB and BLOB datatypes (bug #1820183). Current support
requires holding the entire object in memory so be careful!
* Added $show_meta variable to display JDBC result set metadata as a separate
result set when executing queries.
* Added $maxrows_method variable that is used to control the mechanism that
jsqsh uses to limit row results. This added because I discovered that
setting the row limit in some JDBC drivers caused unwanted side effects.
* Added \procs command to display list of procedures in the current database.
* Added PL/SQL analyzer so that semicolon termination can be used against
Oracle.
* Added \debug command to turn on debugging for specific classes.
* The \describe command will now describe stored procedure parameters.
* Improved formatting of number datatypes (tinyint, int, short, bigint,
float, double, etc.) to minimize the amount of space required for display
wherever possible.
* Fixed the driver definition for the DB2 JDBC driver.
* Commands that edit or alter the current SQL buffer will also affect the
readline history as if the user had just typed in the buffer. E.g. if you
hit '!3' at the prompt to re-load the third oldest query, the readline
history will look as if you just typed that query.
* Fixed bug #1816504 - Queries returning multiple result sets were getting
fouled.
* Fixed bug #1820182 - Handling of Oracle NUMBER columns failing during
formatting.

Version 0.9.5 is now available. This version sports an official RPM build and a lot of changes and features, including:
* Dramatically improved tab completion. It is now contextual to your position within the SQL statement being written. If the FROM clause has been written or the target of the INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE has been specified, then the completion will restrict itself to that context. This was more difficult than I expected!
* Added $headers and $footers configuration variables to control display of result header/footer information
* Added -h and -f to the \go command to toggle the display of result header and footer information respectively.
* Added "-w domain" flag to \connect so that domain based authentication can be used when connecting. Currently only the mssql-jtds driver recognizes this option.
* Added \eval command to read and process the contents of a file.
* Added tab completion of procedure names.
* Added handling/display of SQL warnings.
* Improved formatting of error messages.
* Added testing of JVM support for catching CTRL-C. If it is not supported (i.e. the gcj JVM), then a warning message is issued.
* Added support for gij (gcj's JVM) 1.5.0
* Added default aliases "vi" and "emacs" or \buf-edit
* Removed 'csv' display of footer information (rowcounts).
* By default the \history command will now only show the first 10 lines of any SQL statement. The -a flag has been added to allow you to see the complete statements if you want.
* Fixed OutOfMemoryError when nested SQL exceptions are returned by the server.
* Fixed NullPointerException when running non-interactive scripts of SQL via the -i flag.

Version 0.9.4 of jsqsh is now available. Changes since 0.9.3 are:

* Added tab completion of object names. The logic is pretty smart too, and
understands "quoted object names" and [bracketed object names].
* Added '-m style' flag to the \go command.
* Added new display style 'csv'.
* Added new ${classpath} configuration variable to allow the user to
specify additional jar locations for JDBC drivers.
* Added support for empty passwords
* Added new \macro command for defining velocimacros
* Fixed documentation for the \connect command
* Fixed "-D" flag for the \connect command
* Fixed handling of NULL values for binary data types.

The first release of jsqsh is now available! Please keep in mind that this is beta software (although I have been using it on a regular basis for a while now).