What is pgSQL4RB?
What users have to say
pgSQL4RB Feature Highlights
System Requirements
Pricing and Availability

What is pgSQL4RB? NT Top

pgSQL4RB is the most powerful way to work with multi-user databases in REALbasic! It excels by its stability, full control over virtually all PostgreSQL features, ease of use, thorough documentation, and raw speed.

It basically consists of units of programming code, called classes, which REALbasic software developers can include in their projects, to easily communicate with PostgreSQL databases. 

REALbasic is an object oriented, visual IDE (Integrated Development Environment) from REAL Software. It has the fantastic advantage to work on, and compile for, Windows, Mac OS X, Macintosh Classic, and Linux alike. pgSQL4RB works with both the "Standard" and the "Professional" licenses of REALbasic.

PostgreSQL is an open source database, based on the SQL (Structured Query Language) ANSI standard for accessing database systems. Its industrial strength and extreme feature richness make it the choice of many developers, over other open source and commercial databases alike.
PostgreSQL is made available for free -- even for commercial use unlike MySQL -- by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, under the very flexible BSD license.

The goal of pgSQL4RB is to provide a specialized solution for REALbasic developers, to connect with PostgreSQL databases. Its objective is to implement all PostgreSQL features, and more.

What users have to say NT Top

"You are a genius.
This is so great!
Won't even be that much work to recode!"

"It's awesome. The speed is incredible, and the bindings he provides make it really simple. Once you wrap your head around interacting with the database via sockets, it's wonderful."

-- Brad Rhine

"It seems to be very fast and I suspect very flexible. It also seems as stable, if not more so than anything else I used with REALbasic."

"We might be interested in being your first customers."

-- Lanette Miller

"No, NO I want to be first customer :-)"

"You have changed my perception of what is possible with REALbasic."

"I estimate the speed benefits of your approach, with the added benefit of being written entirely in REALbasic might even make it attractive to Real Software themselves.

... Your approach looks like you'd be able to create databases, users, organize timed backups between different machines, being able to do bulk uploads would also make it attractive to the users with other databases.
If the approach was across the board with every database REALbasic works with, it would make REALbasic both a database speed demon and amazingly stable.

Your work is just elegant."

-- Keith Hutchison

"Your method leaves the RS plugin way behind."

-- Stewart Johnson

"Thanks again, you are doing a terrific job."

-- Eric Nahon

pgSQL4RB Feature Highlights NT Top

Ease of use
pgSQL4RB provides an unparalleled ease of use without any compromise on performance, or on control over your interaction with PostgreSQL.

Great time-saver
With pgSQL4RB, you can build a small frontend, compile it, and run it, in less than 40 seconds! Just imagine how much time you will save on larger projects.

Feature completeness
With this release, pgSQL4RB already supports about 98% of all PostgreSQL features! You won't feel limited in your creativity and you'll be able to push PostgreSQL to its highest gear, while remaining in full control of even the smallest details.

Control-binding
Control-binding is a REALbasic feature, which allows you to program by graphically binding controls together, without typing code. Control-binding has been amply implemented in pgSQL4RB. It not only is very easy to use, but also dramatically speeds up development. Thanks to control-binding, it is possible to create and compile a PostgreSQL frontend in less than a minute, with less than a dozen lines of typed code!

Easily store JPEGs, MP3s, PDFs, etc. (Bytea data type)
To store binary data in PostgreSQL, you need a column of type Bytea. Sending and receiving data to and from a Bytea field, requires special escaping and unescaping. And guess what: pgSQL4RB can do this for you!

MD5 authentication
With this way of authenticating, you'll avoid sending your password as clear text over the network. It will be scrambled instead ("hashed" to be precise), and be undecodable by potential snoopers. MD5 authentication is essential for your security and the protection of your data.

Unicode UTF-8 support
Unicode UTF-8 is a text encoding which allows you to type texts in a wide variety of alphabets. It handles virtually all characters, whether they'd be Roman, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arab, or Asian. UTF-8 makes it possible to build multi-cultural applications, without any additional work.

Automatic text encoding conversion
Unicode UTF-8 is only one of a wild variety of text encodings. In fact, it's a real jungle out there, and the unsuspecting developer can find himself bitten really hard, when confronted for the first time with this issue
Fortunately, pgSQL4RB automatically takes care of any text encoding conversions for you by default. It detects by itself in which encoding your PostgreSQL database was defined, and makes sure all your data gets there in that particular encoding. You don't have to worry about encoding issues, and instead you just can focus on your real work: the functionality you want to implement in your client application.
Automatic text encoding conversion also ensures that both Windows and Macintosh clients can be connected simultaneously to the same database, and have a consistent and accurate representation of textual content, without data corruption.
Automatic Text encoding conversion can be switched off, which forces data to be stored in Unicode UTF-8, regardless of the database's encoding.

Automatic error and notice messages
This is a feature that can be switched on and off as you please. When on, it displays message boxes in plain English, to communicate errors and notices to the user in not too technical a wording. 
You can switch it off temporarily, for routines which need to catch errors in order to determine which action to take further. Or you can switch it off completely, and provide your own messages in the error event, for example when you want to communicate in another language than English.
Automatic messages are another great pgSQL4RB time saver, since you don't have to worry about implementing this yourself when not strictly necessary.

Automatic beeps
You can switch this on and off too. When on, a system beep is emitted for appropriate events, for example when there is an error, or when a given query returns no records.

Automatic headers
When switched on, the headers and captions of the controls you populate with data, will be automatically set to the column name of the respective data. ListBoxes and BevelButtons are examples of such controls.
To provide your own look and feel, you simply leave this off for the control or group of controls you want.

Automatic PostgreSQL log
With a simple control-binding, you can turn an EditField into a PostgreSQL log. While this is rarely useful for a finished client application it is, however, an essential tool during development. The log shows you exactly how PostgreSQL behaves and reacts while your code executes, which allows you to tweak that code accordingly. This leaves the guesswork out, and greatly minimizes the amount of work by trial and error!

Manage your TCP/IP connections
With pgSQL4RB you have full control over the connections you open to databases. You can make sure you only "consume" one connection to a given database per client, and you can implement as many simultaneous connections as your system will support, to several databases and servers, all through drag and drop, control-binding, and a few lines of code. (Hey, you just have to have some of these! ;-)

Import/Export (COPY TO/FROM STDIN/STDOUT)
When you want to import data from the client's hard disk, over the network, into the PostgreSQL database on the server, or export data from the server to the client's disk, you can count on the built in support for the PostgreSQL commands COPY TO/FROM STDIN/STDOUT.

Event-based programming
The incoming messages from PostgreSQL are transformed into REALbasic events. This turns your interaction with PostgreSQL into familiar, and easy, event-based programming.

Notification event
pgSQL4RB supports the PostgreSQL notification mechanism, through a notification event, in which you can code whichever steps you want your client application to take for any given notification. For example you could do something like this (translated to human language): "Hey, another user just updated a record, I shall refresh your screen with that new information."

Cross-platform development and deployment
Not only is REALbasic a really easy and rapid development environment, but you can also choose whether you develop your project on Windows, Macintosh Classic, or OS X. Then you can compile your single(!) project file for any of those platforms plus Linux!

A dream of a development environment
Picture this: full access to Unix shell commands, PostgreSQL running, the world's most advanced GUI, REALbasic running with pgSQL4RB... and you, sitting with all of this, loaded on your Mac OS X booted PowerBook, in your favorite wifi-enabled hot spot coffee shop! It just can't get any better!

Try it for free
Just like REALbasic, you can try pgSQL4RB for free before you buy it, to find out by yourself how well it works for you.

System Requirements NT Top

pgSQL4RB v2 requires REALbasic 2006r3, either Standard or Professional, and PostgreSQL 7.4 or later.

Pricing and Availability NT Top

pgSQL4RB is available for download and purchase now.

You will find an overview of pgSQL4RB's different licenses and prices here.

Mac OS X and the PowerBook are products of Apple Computer, Inc. Windows is a product of Microsoft Corporation.