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  4. New Consistency Check and Emergency Backup Tools

New Consistency Check and Emergency Backup Tools

by wolf at 2008/05/05 at 13:17:57 z

When deploying eXist in a production environment, I really want to make sure that the database is in a consistent state and that potential problems are detected as early as possible. Even if the database is running well, bad things can happen which are outside of eXist's reach (e.g. an OutOfMemory error in the servlet container, which can be fatal).

eXist 1.2.1 will thus offer an automatic consistency and sanity checker. It's main job is to detect inconsistencies or damages in the core database files. This includes the document and collection storage (dom.dbx, collections.dbx) as well as the symbol table (symbols.dbx). While all the indexes can be rebuild after a crash, a corruption in the core files can lead to real data loss.

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  4. Another Old Problem is Solved: Processing In-Memory Fragments

Another Old Problem is Solved: Processing In-Memory Fragments

by wolf at 2008/04/01 at 10:24:39 z

I have some good news for all users who suffered from eXist generating too many temporary document fragments in the db: the current SVN trunk version doesn't need to store those temp fragments anymore! eXist is finally able to handle in-memory fragments in nearly the same way as persistent documents, which also means: without causing a performance bottleneck.

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  4. Summer of Code Deadline Extended

Summer of Code Deadline Extended

by wolf at 2008/04/01 at 09:52:05 z

Google has extended the deadline for student applications until Monday, April 7, 2008. We hope this will convince a few more people to apply. So far we received 6 proposals. However, I think that a detailed application which concentrates on concrete development steps will still have a realistic chance to be accepted.

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  4. Google Summer Of Code

Google Summer Of Code

by wolf at 2008/03/21 at 16:50:41 z

eXist is participating in the Google Summer of Code again. Student applications can be submitted until March 26! The list of proposals along with the timeline can be found here:

Some of our project proposals may sound a bit ambiguous, but please don't be scared: we are here to help ;-) We chose those projects because they represent more or less separate work packages which can be handled without knowing the entire eXist code base.

The list includes, for example, a "remote debugging interface" for XQuery. We certainly don't expect someone to write a full-blown debugger. What we need is a well-defined debugging interface on the server and a simple command-line prototype, which demonstrates the interface.

Or take "index-support for order-by, distinct-values and aggregate functions": eXist's new indexing architecture makes it possible to implement the required functionality as an index plugin. Not too difficult. The challenge though will be to make it efficient.

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  4. eXist 1.2 Released

eXist 1.2 Released

by wolf at 2008/01/16 at 11:59:48 z

After another three weeks of documentation work, I'm really happy to announce that eXist version 1.2 (codename: Rennes) is now available for download at

We counted more than 2500 software changes for this release, including many serious stability fixes.

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