Version 1.7 of Alexandria Utility Library for PL/SQL

The latest version of Alexandria, the utility library for PL/SQL, is now available for download. The previous version has been downloaded more than 2,000 times in the last 8 months.

The docs/readme.txt file contains a fairly detailed list of additions, enhancements and bug fixes. Below are some of the more noteworthy changes:

Improved installation script

You can now choose between installing the full library (close to 50 packages as of this version), by running the main /setup/install.sql script, or you can install just the core set of packages via setup/install_core.sql and then choose additional sets of packages on top of that (for example, /setup/install_microsoft.sql or /setup/install_inet.sql and so on).

Amazon S3 package enhancements

Jeffrey Kemp has submitted several functional enhancements to the S3 package which are incorporated into this version. Jeffrey has also done talks on the Alexandria Library in general and the S3 package in particular; the slides from these presentations are available here. Thanks for spreading the word, Jeff!

New packages: Icalendar, URI templates, and image utilities

A couple of new kids on the block:

• ICALENDAR_UTIL_PKG: Lets you create Icalendar files from the database.
• IMAGE_UTIL_PKG: Get information (such as image width and height) from JPG/GIF/PNG image files. This package is based on code from Anton Scheffer.
• URI_TEMPLATE_UTIL_PKG: Use URI Templates to deal with "nice URLs" in PL/SQL and Apex web applications. 

I might get back to some of these topics later, in separate blog posts; here is a screenshot of the URI_TEMPLATE_UTIL_PKG package in action. (In real life, you would get the actual URI from a web request, for example via mod_plsql, and do something useful after parsing the request.)