[http://www.equi4.com/images/metakit.gif]

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** Attribtutes **

   location:   [http://github.com/jcw/metakit%|%github%|%]

   location:   [http://www.equi4.com/metakit.html%|%equi4.com%|%] (older)



** See Also **

   [StarStore]:   A [redis]-like API for Metakit.

   [Metakit backend for tie]:   

   [Webadmin for Metakit with Tclhttpd]:   

   [Locking Metakit for CGI]:   

   [MetaKit and Tcl Web Server]:   

   [Experimenting with Metakit]:   

   [Metakit2]:   

   [Consistency Server]:   

   [MetaKit Tips and Tricks]:   

   [Metakit File Format]:   



** Documentation **

   [Metakit Documentation]:   [CMcC]: locally reformatted.

   [http://www.equi4.com/metakit/tcl.html%|%Metakit for Tcl documentation]:   

   [http://www.markroseman.com/tcl/mktcl.pdf%|%MetaKit: Quick and Easy Storage for your Tcl Application1%|%] ,a tutorial ,[Mark Roseman] ,2002-04-26:   [http://www.markroseman.com/tcl/mktcl.html%|%HTML version%|%]

   [http://www.drdobbs.com/database/relational-algebra-metakit/184405933%|%Relational Algebra & Metakit%|%] ,Brian Kelly ,Dr. Dobb's ,2004-12-01

   [http://support.articque.com/metakit/metakit_tutorial.html%|%Metakit C++ Tutorial%|%] , [Riccardo Cohen] ,2003-09-19


** Description **

Metakit is a [C++] database library, and is used as the [persistence] engine
underneath [WiKit].  If it works as intended, you'll never have to deal with
any of it, because one of its goals is to help you stay out of trouble.

It was developed, and is actively supported, by [jcw].



** Building **

As of 2012-11-30, the most recent release, 2.4.9.7, does not build against
Tcl-8.6.  Use the latest repository code instead.



** Usage **

'''[DGP]:'''

For what it's worth, here are the points I found most
useful in the Roseman intro:

   * Use properties that define as small a unit of information as possible. 
   * Creating more views is a good thing.  Do that, don't muck up a single view with special cases. 
   * Moving data to/from a Tcl array is easy and familiar to Tclers. 
   * Emphasis that restructuring of a view layout means you can continue revising your data model as you go.  Just start coding; you can change it later.
   * Some discussion when subviews are good vs. additional views.

** Software **

   [e4graph] :   integrates graph structured data storage into Metakit.

   [OOMK]:   the preferred oo metakit interface, written in [Snit], giving many more facilities than vanilla mk4tcl.

   [Mk4tcl]:   The Tcl binding to Metakit
   
   [mk4too]:   an interface that exposes considerably more of the relational functionality of Metakit's C++ core engine
   
   [dgmkviewer]:   a metakit viewer/editor in Tcl
   
   [tsql4mk]:   [DDG]: Tiny [SQL] for Metakit provides



** Historical **

http://www.equi4.com/metakit/wiki.cgi/ was an official wiki for Metakit



** Discussion **

"... many of the integrity
checks required in traditional database use are not required in Metakit,
because Metakit offers nested views -- a cleaner way to represent the
relationships often enforced by integrity constraints."

----

"cleaner" is a matter of opinion, ask a relational database theorist.  I don't want to start those arguments here, just point out that if you use Metakit for a complex system, you '''should''' design first, and be very careful. - EMJ

[DKF]: "You '''should''' design first"?  That's actually true of any non-trivial program, you know... ;^)  
''An ounce of thought saves a ton of effort.''



** To Sort **

[alexshpilkin] Metakit now has a extension for the [Jim] interpreter, too (not yet released as of Sep 3 2011, but available in Git) -- couldn't get in touch with [jcw], so no search support for now. The documentation is at http://jim.berlios.de/documentation/metakit

----

[jcw] 2005-11-09: There were two pages called "Metakit" in this wiki, due to some old renaming glitches.
I've manually adjusted things to resolve this (the "lost" copy was on page 478).  Below is the original text.''

----

Metakit was previously the [persistence] engine for [Wikit].


[Roy Terry 2003-05-09: It was claimed here that Mk4tcl is part of the [ActiveTcl] Batteries included release.  This does not appear to be the case as of 8.4.2.

Hof: Metakit ''is'' included in lib/mk4tcl as of tcl '''8.4.4''', but without documentation, it seems.

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