MiniVend 4 taking shape, MiniVend 3.14-1 released

[mikeh@minivend.com]

Hi folks,

First, I released a patched 3.14-1 with that high-priority
session fix. The whatsnew:

    * Bug in session naming fixed, one which could cause users
      information to be displayed to others. Thanks to Kyle
      Cook for making me look at this.

      If you use WideOpen, you should change your catalog.cfg
      file to read:

            SessionExpire 15 minutes

      This should prevent rampant problems, though if people
      access the same link twice in the 15 minutes there will
      be a problem. I have a better fix for 3.15...in fact there
      will be a 3.14-2 soon that has it.

    * Debug mode somewhat fixed (thanks to Stefan Hornburg)

    * [page form=...] fixed. Several people reported this one.

    * Now correctly reads Apache httpd.conf parameters with
      surrounding quotes (thanks to Simon J. Gerraty for the
      stimulus).

I think I finally have a solid direction for MV4. If I have
waffled a bit, I can only plead that MiniVend is a rather
large beast and that it is difficult to get one's arms around it.

The major differences between my last fragmented communiques:

    -- The focus will definitely be the new Perl 
       object model with access via MiniVend tags for
       people who have trouble with Perl

    -- SQL access will be MUCH improved, with a far
       better query model. MiniVend databases will
       support some simple SQL queries though with
       not nearly the performance you could get from
       a real database.

    -- XML is definitely out, though there is no reason
       you can't generate an XML page in MiniVend.

    -- The security model will be improved -- in particular
       form access can be protected. (It can't now unless
       you do quite a few gyrations that are very unpleasant.)

In short, MiniVend 3.15 will metamorphose into MiniVend 4.
I will put out a MiniVend
There will be fewer compatibility hits than expected, and
most of what is removed is stuff that the docs have been
saying are deprecated for a while. The major changes you
will have to make when it goes to a 4 version number will
come in [perl interpolate=1] land, where most things will
work but a few wont. The search engine will be totally 
re-done but with (I hope) few compatibility problems.
You will definitely want to install SQL::Statement, even
if you don't use SQL databases!

Here is an example of the new [query ..] support in 3.15.

    [query
        arrayref = myquery
        values   = "user1 user2"
        columns  = "text numeric"
        failure  = "QUERY FAILED!"
        success  = "query succeded."
    ]
        select * from products
            where
                text = %s
                  AND
                numeric > %s
    [/query]
    [perl]
        my $ary = $Tmp->{myquery};
        for(@$ary) {
            foo();
        }
    [/perl]

A big improvement in efficiency, and it will pull [value user1]
and [value user2] out of the Values array and quote them properly
depending on field type.

-- 
Mike Heins                          http://www.minivend.com/  ___ 
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