Ratcl (pronounced radical) is an extension for Tcl to explore and manage structured data collections. It grew out of experience with the Metakit [1] embedded database library. See the overview for further information. The glossary may also help find your bearing.

Ratcl is part of Vlerq [2], an ongoing research project which aims to create a general-purpose, language agnostic, high performance column-wise data manipulation framework.

Documentation

This area was started June 21st, 2007. There is limited documentation so far:

• C source code + over 800 Tcl tests - see the vqcore.tgz + vqtcl.tgz downloads
• an API overview, with examples - [3]
• paper presented at the 2006 Tcl/Tk conference (PDF [4], slides [5])
• contributed vops - look here when you don't find a view operator in the API overview

The documentation will be brought up-to-date and expanded here as time permits.

Downloads

Ratcl is open source under the MIT license [6]. Its core is written in C, with some Tcl wrapper code on top. The vqtcl package is portable and easier to build than vqcore.

• C source code with 800+ Tcl tests - http://www.equi4.com/pub/vq/vqcore.tgz
• a TEA3 extension generated from it - http://www.equi4.com/pub/vq/vqtcl.tgz
• all the latest sources: svn checkout svn://svn.equi4.com/vlerq/trunk vlerq

There is a Ratcl Starkit with some extensions at http://www.equi4.com/pub/sk/ratcl.kit :

• Ratk will display any view as browsable window in Tk (by Brian Theado)
• view wrappers around SQLite and Oratcl (by Brian Theado)
• the SQLite extension itself (by Richard Hipp)
• Tkcon is included for interactive use (by Jeff Hobbs)
• and more... (TBD)

This Starkit can be used in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Get involved

There is a mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/vlerq

Credits

Several people have helped shape Ratcl over the years, including:

• Brian Theado
• Mark Roseman
• Steve Landers

For mistakes, omissions, failures, lack of progress: blame JCW, Vlerq's author.