Store is the version control system used in Cincom Smalltalk, based on a relational database back-end. Recently this has been the focus of a lot of work. The ad hoc database access layer has been replaced with the Glorp object-relational mapping layer, presenting various opportunities for optimization and also some challenges. It supports a richer domain model for the database objects, makes adapting to new databases much easier, and makes it easier for users to work with the system. However, existing extensions will need to be changed. The loading mechanism has also been supplemented with an "atomic" loader which treats the source code more declaratively and is much less subject to issues like load ordering and less fragile in updating system code. Code browsing and comparison tools have also been rewritten, with the former using a subset of the Refactoring Browser. This talk will describe some of these changes in more detail and talk about plans for future releases.
Alan Knight is the Engineering Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, and lead on the open-source Glorp object-relational mapping library. Before joining Cincom he was chief architect for the TOPLink family of products, and a member of the Sun expert groups on EJB 2.0 and JDO. He is co-author of Mastering ENVY/Developer (Cambridge, 2001) and has written and spoken at conferences extensively. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.