Warning, heavy techno-speak and acronyms ahead. OpenOSX.com, a business that concentrates on Mac OS X products, is shipping their OpenDB 2.1 CD, which, according to company President Jeshua Lacock, “transforms a Macintosh running Mac OS X (10.1.x) into a world class dynamic Enterprise Intranet server” with SQL (structured query language) backends and Web-based graphical user interface frontends.
The CD installs and configures the following apps that work with Mac OS X 10.1: MySQL 3.23.46, PostgreSQL 7.1.3, phpMyAdmin 2.2.2, phpPgAdmin 2.2.0, MyODBC 2.50.38, iODBC 3.0.5, Apache Web Server 1.3.22, PHP 4.1.1, PDF Lib 4.0.1 (a demo), Free Type 2, and GD 1.8.4. The OpenDB CD is bundled with documentation in HTML and PDF formats, limited technical support, and configured source code along with de-installation software.
phpMyAdmin/phpPgAdmin are browser-based interfaces that allow you to accomplish most day-to-day database administration tasks from the comfort of any browser on the network, Lacock said. MyODBC/iODBC are standard application programming interfaces (APIs) for accessing information from different database systems and storage formats. PHP is the cross-platform server-side scripting language for making and serving dynamically generated Web pages.
OpenOSX has built PHP with support for PDF Lib, XML, WDDX, Regex Library, MySQL and PostgreSQL, Perl Compatible Regular Expressions, ODBC, GD, FTP, EXIF, CURL, BC Math and ZLib. PDF Lib allows for the creation of dynamic PDF files. MySQL is for serving databases on the Internet and enterprise LAN/WANs. PostgreSQL is an alternative to MySQL. WebCalendar is a Web based personal calendar. FreeType is a software font engine.
The OpenDB CD costs US$30. Six month CD subscriptions are $80. More info can be found at the OpenOSX Web site.