February 25, 2005
IBM commits to PHP
IBM backs open-source Web software
IBM is putting its corporate heft behind a popular open-source Web development technology called PHP, in a move meant to reach out to a broader set of developers.
I say, good on ya! I think that PHP can work very well in the SMB space; but it should be interesting to see the exact revenue stream behind the marriage of IBM and Zend....my prediction IBM Global Services. IBM says it wants to woo developers, and I'm sure they will turn out some nice tools, but "woo developers" is code for better equip our consultants.
Oh, and in typical IBM fashion, they strap a boat-anchor to an otherwise good annoucement...Cloudscape. Now don't get me wrong, I like the pure Java Cloudscape DB, and I use it daily. It's great for Java applications. But there's a reason you can't spell LAMP with a J.
More information from Stephen O'Grady.
February 23, 2005
February 18, 2005
February 11, 2005
JDOM, Namespaces, and XPath
When using JDOM for XPath expressions, remember the following (source):The key point to remember is that there is no default namespace in XPath. That is, whether your document uses namespace prefixes or not, you have to use prefixes when referencing namespaces in XPath expressions. These prefixes do not have to match the ones used in the document if you declare the namespace using XPath.addNamespace().A detailed example is
XPath xp = XPath.newInstance("/ns:Receipt/ns:DateTime");
xp.addNamespace("ns", "http://www.nrf-arts.org/IXRetail/namespace");
Element timestampEl = (Element) xp.selectSingleNode(document);
System.out.println(timestampEl.getValue());
The above code will correctly return the value of the DateTime attribute in the following XML document.<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Receipt xmlns="http://www.nrf-arts.org/IXRetail/namespace" xmlns:xsi="http:/www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/IXRetail DR_Receipt.xsd"> <Location xsi:type="AddressedParty"> <ContactName> <FirstName></FirstName> <LastName></LastName> </ContactName> <Address> <Street1></Street1> <City></City> <State></State> <PostalCode></PostalCode> </Address> </Location> <TransactionID>0001</TransactionID> <DateTime>0501261151</DateTime> <TotalAmount></TotalAmount> </Receipt>Note: the above XML doesn't validate. It has been abbreviated.
February 10, 2005
February 09, 2005
Did the Gurus miss the real opportunity with Sun's Grid?
I just finished the latest Gillmor Gang (I love that show) and there was some discussion of Sun's $1/cpu-hr annoucement. The guys discussed the obvious applications, render farms and life science applications. I agree that Sun's grid is obviously targeted at those applications, after all what cosumer can affort computing power at $1/cpu-hr and $1 GB/month.... Hey, wait, did the gurus just miss the obvious "residential application?"
Because I can't transfer my local number to Vonage, I pay $42/month to BellSouth for local telephone service (I do have a Vonage account primarily to make long distance calls but also because VoIP is cool). I also pay $90/month for digital cable and high-speed Internet access. Jonathan Schwartz has said over and over that he sees the comditization of computing and computing as a utility. He practically laid it out for us in his post Looking Back on Commodities where he compares computing to electricity. Who wants to own and maintain their own generator!? Likewise will we be saying "Who wants to own and maintain their own computer?" As a member of the tech support generation, I don't want some of my friends and family maintaining their own computer (3 hrs last Saturday to help a friend rebuild his Windows 98 system!).
So what's the application to the home and home office? The device that everyone has missed is the Sun Ray. I've only seen one post (and from a Sun employee) making this connection. The Sun Ray is an ultra-thin computing client. They are all over Sun's campus. Just swipe your Sun ID badge and wala, your desktop appears. In my opinion, a very under-hyped device.
So today I could buy/lease a good computer from Dell or Apple for $45/month. A computer that I must backup my critical data, keep virus free, apply the latest MS patches, etc. so that my wife could check email and surf the web (I've got an office laptop). Would I pay $45/month for a SunRay (and maybe even bandwidth) that was completely managed by Sun (or a Sun business partner), a device that would be secure, reliable, backed-up, and virus free (and even run Linux programs)? Probably. Would I recommend such a device to my friends and family? Definately.
Okay, so $45/month is definately more expensive than $500 at Wal-Mart and the $100 laptop. But if time is money, and it is, then this could work. After all Sun has all the pieces: inexpensive Opteron servers, Solaris containers, global grid, the mindset, the beta testers...
