A Bundle of Bundles

Allow me to preface this post with a disclaimer: It may be a little technical in the way of OSX development. I will add Wikipedia links for those still interested in reading on.

What is a bundle?

A Bundle is ultimately a folder in file's clothing. They are a great part of OSX and you already use them everyday. They allow people to write code for a program without muddling through the actual code of the program. Essentially, people can jump into the project without having to familiarize themselves with the existing code-base of Shift.

I know what a bundle is; get on with it!

We wanted to add support for RDBMS in a completely modular fashion. This way someone could easily add support for something like PostgreSQL without ever having to touch Shift code. We are in the process of nailing down a Formal Protocol which can then be implemented by different people to add support for a specific RDBMS. The planning for the protocol is definitely in it's infancy right now. If you're interested in getting involved with Shift or possibly adding support for a specific RDBMS you can see our notes on what we've started in the wiki. Our goal for the 0.5 release is to have support for both MySQL and SQLite in Shift. We've set up a separate repository for the bundles. To checkout the repository just paste this into terminal:

svn co http://svn.shiftosx.com/bundles

Once the protocol reaches a comfortable level of maturity I plan to add a semi-in-depth guide on creating a bundle. Until then I'll leave you with this screenshot.

Jonathan

New Core Team Member - Lauren Herda

Hey everybody. I'd like to introduce you to the latest member of the Shift Core Team: Lauren Herda. She will be taking on the Lead Designer role and will be in charge of the visual direction and branding for the Shift Project. She has already begun work on new icons for Shift and you can follow her progress on the Shift Ohloh Page.

Posting has been slow as of late, but we are still working hard and have some very, very cool things to release in the next few days. If you can't wait, check out the current 0.5 branch and you will see a small bit of the fruits of our research and labor.

Until then, - Nate

Donations? Logos? Leprechauns?

Time for a few quick updates.

We have received a couple requests to put up a donation button. While we really like the idea of making a little bit of cash (really, who doesn't), Crossman and I have decided to hold off on any donations at least until the release of 0.5. We feel that we need to get a release out there before this really becomes a legitimate project.

Thankfully, Shift has received a decent amount of attention lately. Thanks for the kind words in the comments and on the interweb tubes. To those who offered to help, thanks a million. To those who didn't, and can, you really should. We are looking to keep the core of the project small at the moment, but we need contributors to UI, logo/brand development, testers, and brainstormers. However, if you are a true cocoa ninja, there is definitely a place for you here. MySQL experts (and after 0.5, other databases) are totally welcome as well.

We have some new ideas and hopefully some new mockups coming down the line. We also will be drafting a requirements list on the trac wiki here in the coming weeks to help guide development through 1.0. Please post any feature requests so we can get them in there.

Let's be honest, most database apps suck. We have the power to make a better mousetrap, so we're going to do it.

Leprechauns? No comment.

Shift is on Ohloh

Just a quick update:

Shift is now on Ohloh. Check it out at http://www.ohloh.net/projects/shift

Shift 0.5 in Development

About 4 days after 0.2 went out the door, Crossman and I had a planning meeting to discuss the future of Shift. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Crossman, this UI sucks. Bigtime.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: I mean it's horrible. Steve would cry.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: So we are in agreement? The UI has to go.
Crossman: Yup.
Me: Ok, so what are we going to do about it being a document application? I'm thinking we really want to move this to a source list and tab implementation.
Crossman: Uh huh
Me: This means total rewrite. You know that, right?
Crossman: Yup

So, a mockup or 2 later and some clever hacking by Crossman, Shift 0.5 development is underway. And we would like to introduce it to you now.

What you see below is version one of a Photoshop mockup of the general Shift UI. You can see we have moved to a favorites system where the databases are listed in a source list on the left-hand side in true iTunes fashion. The toolbar is minimal because most table operations will be handled either through contextual menus or actions at the bottom of the source list. External windows (Server vars, etc...) will be pushed out to HUDs. Functionality will be added to Shift to allow for the CRUD of stored procedures in RDMSs (note, we mean more than one...) that support it. View support as well. The schema view is probably the most experimental aspect and will be covered in-depth at a later time. However, think Quartz Composer for databases...

This (below) is where we currently stand. The source list is built out from your server favorites and is editable. Pref panes are in place. Sparkle auto-updating is already in place and will be set to update the alpha releases. We may even come up with a system to target your updates in a pref pane to grab the latest nightly or just point releases. Things are underway and we will be redesigning the entire database connection layer from CocoaMySQL to generalize the application. In other words, this isn't just about MySQL anymore. However, MySQL will likely be the only database engine supported to the 1.0 release stage.

This post has been a bit long-winded. I hope we can garner some support in the OS X database developer community and get some interest in this project. If you have any desire to contribute to the development effort ($, time, code, graphic design, beer, hugs, etc...) please let us know.

Oh, and if you want to build this mess that is Shift 0.5 and give us any feedback, grab it with:
svn co http://trac.shiftosx.com/shift_dev/branches/0.5