SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 21, 2014) - Typesafe, provider of the world's leading Reactive platform and the company behind Play Framework, Akka, and Scala, today announced the 2.0 release of Slick (Scala Language Integrated Connection Kit) -- the most efficient library available for functional programmers connecting applications to relational databases.

Functional programmers have long suffered Object-Relational and Object-Math impedance mismatches when connecting to relational databases. Slick's new Functional Relational Mapping (FRM) paradigm allows mapping to be completed within Scala, with loose-coupling, minimal configuration requirements, and a number of other major advantages that abstract the complexities away from connecting with relational databases.

"We don't try to fight the relational model, we embrace it through a functional paradigm," said Jonas Bonér CTO and co-founder at Typesafe. "Instead of trying to bridge the gap between the object model and the database model, we've brought the database model into Scala so developers don't need to write SQL code. We believe that FRM has emerged as the ideal way to talk to a relational database in the functional programming world."

Slick is a relational database query and access library, which began as a customer-funded open source project called ScalaQuery. Slick integrates databases directly into Scala, allowing stored and remote data to be queried and processed in the same way as in-memory data, using ordinary Scala classes and collections. This enables full control over when a database is accessed and which data is transferred. The language integrated query model in Slick's FRM is inspired by the LINQ project at Microsoft and leverages concepts tracing all the way back to the early work of Mnesia at Ericsson.

Slick 2.0 (available under the open source BSD license), supports most relational databases with commercial support options for Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server relational databases available from Typesafe.

Some of the key benefits of Slick's FRM approach for functional programming include:

• Efficiency with Pre-Optimization

FRM is more efficient way to connect; unlike ORM it has the ability to pre-optimize its communication with the database -- and with FRM you get this out of the box. The road to making an app faster is much shorter with FRM than ORM.

• No More Tedious Troubleshooting with Type Safety

FRM brings type safety to building database queries. Developers are more productive because the compiler finds errors automatically versus the typical tedious troubleshooting required of finding errors in untyped strings.

• A More Productive, Composable Model for Building Queries

FRM supports a composable model for building queries. It's a very natural model to compose pieces together to build a query, and then reuse pieces across your code base.

Slick 2.0 for Scala is available immediately. See additional resources below:

• Get started by downloading the Activator template here
• Read the blog post
• Read the release notes
• Register for the webinar, Introducing Slick 2.0.0

About Typesafe

Typesafe (Twitter: @Typesafe) is dedicated to helping developers build Reactive applications on the JVM. With the Typesafe Reactive Platform, comprised of Play Framework, Akka, and Scala, developers can deliver highly responsive user experiences backed by a resilient and event-driven application stack that scales on multicore and cloud computing architectures. The company also offers Typesafe Activator, a browser-based tool with reusable templates to jump-start Reactive application development, training and consulting services in conjunction with partners to accelerate adoption, and commercial support and maintenance to assure long-term binary compatibility. Backed by Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Juniper Networks, Typesafe is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Switzerland and Sweden. To learn more, visit www.typesafe.com.