Base 1.3.3 has been released today. Among it’s changes are two highly requested features: Inclusion of full-text searching (the FTS3 module) and improved handling of SQLite internal tables (those with a name starting “sqlite_”). You can now enable/disable visibility of internal tables in the app preferences.
FTS3 does come with a minor caveat. It seems that there is not a reliable way to identify tables that are part of an FTS3 index. Because of this, I have disabled the modification of virtual tables from the user interface. You (the user) will be responsible for not modifying or dropping the *_content, *_segdir and *_segments tables generated by the FTS module. I do hope to improve this in the future.
As I don’t have one of those (expensive) subscriptions to Apple’s Dev Centre, today has been the first chance to test Base on Snow Leopard (10.6). So far everything seems to work ok, but if anyone comes across any new oddities since upgrading, please let me know. You can either add a comment below or send an email.
A notice for anyone using BatteryInfo on Mac OS 1.5.8 or higher. With the 10.5.8 release, Apple made a change which broke the way this widget gathers data causing it to look empty while actually fully charged:
You can download a fixed version (v1.5.1) from the BatteryInfo page. It also includes a Japanese translation by Takeshi Sagara.
Just a quick note regarding Base and using non-English characters in SQL queries. Base defaults to using the font Courier in the custom SQL and log views. This font doesn’t seem to support a very wide range of international glyphs, so text like ‘Αθήνα’ 1 simply doesn’t appear in the text fields!
The main focus of this release is table schema editing. As SQLite does not natively have the ability to alter table schemas, it is a multi-step process (create new table, copy old data across, delete the old table) and I’m very pleased to finally have such an important feature in the app.
Update 2009-05-31
PayPal have now restored access to payment processing. All should hopefully be normal now.
As anyone who has tried to buy Base since Friday (28 May 2009) has noticed, I'm currently unable to accept payments and hence process any sales. This is because PayPal has noticed that I had not fully verified my details with their system to prove I'm not some sort of international fraudster. Which I'm not.
It’s good that they do check people out. Their system as a whole would collapse without a decent level of scrutiny. However in my case, I don’t feel they’ve applied much common sense to the matter. Example:
I’m very happy to announce that our first foray into iPhone development has been released. Jezz is a game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, closely based on the old game of Jezzball. To complete each level, you must claim 70% of the playing field by building walls. If a wall in progress is hit by a ball, the wall is destroyed and you lose a life. Each level becomes more difficult through adding more and destructive balls.
Well, Base 1.2 has been out for just over a week now, so I figured it’s time for an update.
So far, the app seems to have had a pretty good reception. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to contact me with feedback (especially those who have sent detailed bug reports). For the most part, complaints and requests have centered around one area: the editing of existing tables.
