The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.

The general availability of the official Joomla 2.5.0 release is due on January 24, 2012.  Also, in case you missed it, Beta 1 of Joomla 2.5 was released just as the holidays were getting in full swing.  You can also expect another beta and a release candidate from the Joomla developers between now and Release 2.5.0. 

For those new to software development, the beta and release candidates of software typically is not suitable for production sites and should be used only for testing purposes. Testing the pre-release software isn't only a great way for you to get to know Joomla 2.5 better but it is also a great way to help the developers identify and fix bugs in the software. 

The folks over at Geeklog have announced that their blogging application now supports PostgreSQL. Geeklog's move is similar to other open source projects that have recently diversified their support for more additional database management systems.

Dear Geeklog users, today we are proud to announce the public availability of Geeklog with beta PostgreSQL support. This is the culmination of a Google Summer of Code project to implement this feature. PostgreSQL support builds on the already impressive list of MySQL and MSSQL support. This continues to improve Geeklog’s interoperability, which now offers support for the most popular relational database management systems.

Support for Postgres currently is in beta and "should strictly be used on local and testing environments". Geeklog also supports MySQL and and MSSQL.

Work is currently underway to provide an extension so that SilverStripe can run on Microsoft SQL Server 2008.  The SilverStripe module allowing for this connection to the SQL Server is currently still being developed, but the alpha version according to Sigurd Magnusson does work.

Other than that, we're using the code with success internally, and know others in the community are too. We're mentioning this SQL Server milestone in the blog to let you know that the feature is well on its way, and to allow careful developers a chance to try it out, provide feedback, and files bugs before we mark it as a publicly stable module.

SilverStripe, as with many PHP-based content management systems, has historically only supported MySQL for it's database.  Besides MS SQL, SilverStripe also hopes to be able to run on additional databases such as PostgreSQL and SQLite.

Like a lot of people, I too wonder what will happen to the MySQL, Java, and hardware once Sun is integrated into Oracle.  I have opinions but those opinions alone aren't worth a hill of NetBeans.  Luckily, people like Gavin Clarke know what they're talking about.  Clarke has written an excellent article at The Register titled,  Sun and Oracle: end of a beautiful dream.

Oracle will take the decisions Sun could not, and that's what'll have people at Sun worried. And while change should be welcomed, there's no way this should be seen as a bright new dawn for Sun customers or those who've come to believe in its actions on open source or Java.

The first thing you can expect from a Oracle acquisition is due-diligence of the assets and a comparative analysis where Oracle has competing assets. Oracle will weigh up what's worth keeping and jettison the rest. The latter will be marked by end-of-lifing via support and maintenance, or releasing code to the community - where it will fade and die.

The article isn't as gloomy as the title or the above excerpt would imply. However, the article is pragmatic and leaves little room for dreamers.  Be sure to read the article!

Thanks to a post at OpenSourceCommunity.org, I came across a conversion tool to allow you to import the SMF 1.1 database into a phpBB 3 site. Information about the conversion tool can be found in a forum post at phpbb.com. By the way, the script is still in beta, meaning that it works but you might find some bugs since it is not fully tested.

It is not that I'm encouraging anyone to convert their site from SMF to phpBB, but it is very nice to have options such as these available. In fact if anyone can point me to a good conversion tool for migrating a phpBB database to SMF, I would welcome the information.