[Qgis-psc] Contributing an SQL Anywhere plugin/provider

[Tim Sutton]

Hi Dave

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:58 PM,  <Dave.DeHaan at sybase.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Project Steering Committee,
>
> I work for Sybase, performing R&D for our SQL Anywhere (SA) product.  SA is
> a cross-platform feature-rich relational DBMS, whose market niches are
> small- to medium-sized businesses, embedded applications, and mobile
> environments.  Our most recent version (SA12) added comprehensive spatial
> support, modelled after the SQL/MM and OGC standards.  We ship a spatial
> viewer with our product as part of the administrative tools, but it is
> exactly that---a viewer intended for developers or administrators, not an
> end-user GIS application.  Many of our customers are new to spatial data
> and are starting to consider how it might benefit their business.  For
> those customers interested in trying out a feature-rich GIS application, we
> would like to be able to recommend the Quantum GIS project.  From our
> perspective, enabling QGIS to work with SQL Anywhere could be a benefit
> both to Sybase customers and to the QGIS project.
>
> To that end, I have written a C++ plugin/data-provider combination that
> interfaces QGIS (works with v1.5 and 1.6) with an SA12 (or later) backend.
> All that is needed to compile them is a few SA-specific header files, which
> we have released under the Apache v2.0 licence.  To establish a connection
> to an SA server requires that the client machine has the (proprietary) SQL
> Anywhere client libraries installed; otherwise a message to that effect is
> displayed, along with a link to download the free Developer's edition of
> SA.
>
> The plugin/provider code will be released under GPLv3.  Although we could
> distribute it ourselves, we would prefer to contribute it back to the QGIS
> project so that the SA compatibility is packaged and distributed as part of
> the main QGIS application.  For convenience, we would also contribute the
> SA-specific headers to the repository (three files subject to the Apache
> license, not GPL).  I would be willing to join the project as maintainer of
> this code.
>
> I look forward to hearing your thoughts on accepting this contribution.
>
> Best regards,
> David DeHaan
>
> PS - In the interest of full discloser, over the weekend I had a brief
> email discussion with Tim, Marco, and Gary about licensing details.  They
> suggested this posting to the PSC once our lawyers signed off on the GPL
> release, which has now happened.


As per our email discussion, I support the addition of this provider
and propose Dave be given SVN access so that he can directly
contribute and maintain his work. Its really cool to have such
additions make their way into the QGIS code base!

+1

It would be nice if possible for us (interested QGIS developers I
guess) to test the SQL Anywhere provider. Is there some way we can get
licenses of SQL Anywhere for personal use or is there otherwise some
kind of trial version that we can use for this purpose?

Regards

Tim

>
> ----
> David E. DeHaan, Ph.D.
> SQL Anywhere Research and Development
> Query Processing team
> Sybase iAnywhere
> www.sybase.com/ianywhere
>
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> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
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>



-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
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