Looks somewhat familiar...
apt-get
for Pine, and discovered that it doesn't support DJB's Maildir stuff which we use at the haus. So, I've now fired up and am trying to learn Mutt (meaning that I'm un-learning a decade of Pine keystrokes). This is also a subtle reminder that it's still polite to send plaintext email wrapped at 72 columns.
Also, it's not much fun climbing upon your 80-year-old house in the driving rain to tie a tarp over the roof the previous owners described as having "no leaks". Sure, depending on the definition of "no".
]]>
Looks somewhat familiar...
Janino is a compiler that reads a JavaTM expression, block, class body, source file or a set of source files, and generates JavaTM bytecode that is loaded and executed directly. Janino is not intended to be a development tool, but an embedded compiler for run-time compilation purposes, e.g. expression evaluators or "server pages" engines like JSP.]]>
One of the many worms out there is sending its crap and spoofing the From with my email address. We all know it happens, right? Well, these idiots don't bother to check to see if it's bogus email, instead, they send an automatic verification email to me, for me to prove that I really sent the mail. 30 times. For the same recipient. Of course, they provide no way to anti-verify it. So, I continue to get assloads of their verification mails in my inbox. Helping to solve the spam problem? Not from my perspective.
update
Just received a reply to my complaint...
OK, your address is now blocked. You could have setup filters in your mail client to block us as well.
Doesn't that seem like an odd response to someone providing services to keep your inbox clean? Not even an opt-out response, but more of a "just delete'em" response. Yep, idiots.
]]>A Coverage Tool for Java Developers, Written By a Java Developer]]>Code coverage for free: a basic freedom? Until recently, the world of Java development had been plagued by an absurd discrepancy: Java developers had excellent free IDEs, free compilers, free test frameworks but had to rely on code coverage tools that charged an arm and a leg in license fees. As a Java pro, I would like to use the same free coverage tool regardless of whether it is a massive commercial project at work or a small fun project at home. I've created EMMA to be that tool.
That's all for now]]>
The BEA WebLogic Workshop controls are immediately and freely available for download at http://www.dev2dev.com/controlpack.com. BEA is sponsoring an open source community to foster collaboration and further improvement on service controls. The community will be hosted at controlhaus, a sister site to popular open source community codehaus, at http://www.codehaus.org.]]>
Had the distinct pleasure of meeting Cameron Purdy and Cliff Schmidt yet again, and Chris Fry, Alex Vasseur and Jonas Boner for the first time.
I'm still in SF until early Friday, so if you're here and I don't know it, look me up.
]]>Service-Oriented Architecture...]]>It's the buzz in the world of enterprise software development and integration: Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA). And at BEA, we're all over it.
TeXML is an XML vocabulary for TeX. A processor translates TeXML source into TeX.]]>
Berkeley DB Java Edition]]>
So long, and thanks for all the fish...]]>
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"flyingj" Nickname:"HERMES I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point: 00:0B:FD:C8:B0:46
Bit Rate:1Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry limit:4 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:31/92 Signal level:-75 dBm Noise level:-106 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:122
Tx excessive retries:448 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Bridging the worlds of NNTP clients and RSS feeds, nntp//rss is an application that will enable you to use your existing favorite NNTP newsreader to read your information channels.]]>
<bob> !time]]>
<ben> The time is Fri, 05 Mar 2004 00:29:14 +1000 in Bensland, Australia. Happy Birthday Ben! (subtle I know...)
Created On:26-Feb-2003 15:55:34 UTC
Since then, we've had the first irregular Haus Party, picked up a corporate sponsor or two, birthed quite a few new projects (some which admittedly should probably die), and overall wildly exceeded any expectations I had when I spent the $35 on the domain.
Without the amazing hausmates, the Codehaus would've been nothing than rebranded Werken Company projects. Thankfully, Werken things make up a much smaller percentage of the goings-on of the haus. So, if you care to celebrate, raise a stein of brew and cheer in another year.
]]>Technologists consume Big-Gulp-loads of information, and write, code, and edit reams of output. Author Charlie Stross notes that he reads and digests more in his morning bookmarks than most literate 18th-century readers would process in a year. Linus Torvalds and other open source leaders hold down day jobs, and still have time to create wonders in their spare time. Everyone at ETech juggles amounts of email that would stun an ox.
While not necessarily a causal relationship, the sampled geeks tended to use plaintext, shells, and email. And index cards. Lots and lots of index cards.
Rebecca, a self-proclaimed "east-coast girl" declared San Diego to be "too sunny".
]]>2.0-beta-13 is actually now out, fixing a problem with the Groovy semantic module. At the same time, I'd like to announce the Kalstride KRules GUI.]]>
mnogo has a nice feature where you can pass limiting search URLs as a query parameter. But I find that to be ugly. So, with a little mod_rewrite, and a Perl CGI which is truly a classic wrapper-facade around mnogo's search.cgi, I've encapsulated my own collection logic using pretty URLs and collection descriptors on the file-system. The Perl wrapper synthesizes a QUERY_STRING that mnogo will eat, and formats the results nicely.
Overall, I'm pleased. I use to hate Perl. Now, I realize that sometimes, it can certainly get the job done.
]]>You could mix the Strawberry and Rice Shampoo with a little ginger ale to produce a lovely beverage. Slices of the Oatmeal and Walnut Body Bar would go well with a cup of coffee. The Lavendar and Mint Bath Beads in a dish for guests to freshen their breath. Maybe even roll up and smoke some Pure Hemp Exfoliating Cloths.
]]>The idea: Get 200 or so smart folks with a lot in common together in one place at one time, let them pitch tents, toss in a Wi-Fi network, and see what happens. Turns out, quite a lot.]]>
Claims about the Web and politics have commonly confounded two different things: retrievability and visibility, the large universe of pages that could theoretically be accessed versus those that citizens are most likely to encounter. While the governing assumption of much previous work has been that retrievability would translate inexorably into visibility, we cast doubt on that claim. Drawing on a large literature in computer science that ties a site's visibility to the number of inbound hyperlinks it receives, this paper proposes a new methodology for measuring the link structure surrounding political Web sites. Our technique involves iterative, extremely large scale crawls away from political sites easily accessible through popular online search tools, and it uses sophisticated automated methods to categorize site content. In every community we examine, we find that a small handful of Web sites dominate. Online political communities on the Web thus seem to function as "winners take all" networks, a fact that would seem to have widespread implications for politics in the digital age.]]>
While the Drools project has previously experienced a drought in terms of releases, the release schedule has once again picked up and active progress is being made. Ring in the new year!
Some of the important changes include:
* 2-phase execution model
* conflict reslution
* removal of Jelly
* simplification of the XML language
* expanded the semantic module framework
* fixed the go-slow bug. several orders of magnitude faster now.
* a Groovy semantic module
* a new manual
* simple bash script to build it (no maven required)
* all dependencies included
* and a brand spanking new website
Keep in mind this is still a beta release, and there are indeed holes in the website and the manual. Good luck and godspeed.
]]>I would like you to Welcome Thomas Diesler that will start with us on the 1st of January 2004 (at 0h00, and I will verify this). <applause />]]>Thomas will work on the Web Services for J2EE 1.4 and is also interested in better integrating a rule engine in JBoss. He will work out of M�nich and he is thus our first true German-speaking engineer.
Thomas is also the stereotype of the Red-Pill guy: he left East-Germany while he was at the army by doing a risky trip through slavic countries (he was then condamned to a life-sentence by the East-German authorities), had to swim between borders, etc. and .... a few months later... the Berlin wall felt! Somehow frustrating I guess ;)
Another entry in the small but growing management library that suggests purposely slowing down and smelling the roses could actually boost productivity in today's 24/7 world, Tom DeMarco's Slack stands out because it is aimed at "the infernal busyness of the modern workplace."]]>
Tired of writing the same old code over and over again to catch InterruptedExceptions on Thread.sleep() calls?
The example that is so proudly displayed demonstrates how the library makes it easier to sleep without having to catch and ignore those apparently useless InterruptedException
s. What this fails to realize is that when an InterruptedException
is thrown, chances are, someone is trying to shut things down or otherwise do, I dunno, something exceptional. If you're ignoring them, then you're not addressing the circumstances correctly. You certainly don't need a library to help you ignore them more effeciently.
Thread.sleep(...)
doesn't throw InterruptedException
just to annoy you. It's done for a reason. Understand the reason and code appropriately.
Individuals and companies interested in making presentations or giving tutorials are invited to submit proposals using the form below. Proposals will be considered in two classes: tutorials and convention presentations (sessions). Presentations by marketing staff or with a marketing focus will not be accepted; neither will submissions made by anyone other than the proposed speaker.]]>
I have just been informed that RELAX NG was published by ISO as an International Standard on 1st December 2003. The full title is: ISO/IEC 19757-2:2003 Information technology -- Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL) -- Part 2: Regular-grammar-based validation -- RELAX NG]]>
This is the first ever release; so I'm sure there maybe mistakes or issues with the source / binary distro; we can fix any issues & do more releases much quicker now. A last minute feature that made it into the release (complete with typeo) thats not yet been documented is the script 'groovysh' which runs a groovy command shell. Its like the swing console but works on the command line - you just need to enter a blank line to execute a command (so hit CR twice).]]>
Current directory: [codehaus] / drools / drools-groovy]]>
Files shown: 8
XQEngine is a compact (roughly 250K) embeddable component written in Java. It's not a standalone application and requires a reasonable amount of Java programming skill to use. It has a straightforward programming interface that makes that fairly easy to do. It's single-threaded and should work well as a personal productivity tool on a single desktop, as part of a CD-based application, or on a server with low to moderate traffic. (Making the engine thread-capable is not overly difficult and remains a future project.)]]>
Proposed Final Draft 29 Oct, 2003]]>
If you write, you need a copy of Strunk and White sitting right next to your Websters Collegiate Dictionary.
The fact is, the vast majority of so-called book doctors are garbage. An exception would be Strunk and White's classic Elements of Style. It was originally written during WWI by William Strunk who was then a professor at Cornell, and it has since been updated by E.B.White, one of his former pupils. Strunk's strategy was to edit down the complexities of English grammar into those few basic elements which would help people to improve their writing skills. His central rule is simple:]]>
So, I knocked upon the door today with a bag of new hardware and said "congratulations, you're a Mac user now!" She's now been vaulted into the 21st century with a G4 iBook, Airport Extreme, Wifi route/WAP combination and a bundle of new software. It was easier than dying a slow death diagnosing Windows.
]]>I'll admit that currently there are technical limitations to allowing business folks to write and deploy rules on IT infrastructure without the intervention of IT staff. But ultimately, IT should be transparent and the people who write the rules (ie, who run the business) on a daily basis should simply be able to do so. If a business person can't write business rules, perhaps he should be flipping burgers down at Krusty Burger.
Of course, I'm also fully aware that some/many business folks don't know how to write rules and only can keep their jobs because it takes IT quite a while to realized bogus rules in code, and by then, it's assumed that it's IT's fault the system doesn't work or make sense. A transparent business rule facilitating technology will make the business side of the enterprise more directly accountable for their decisions. Be careful what you wish for.
]]>I've learned that the rule engine is but a small portion of the entire space of "business rules". There's plenty of room to grow. Nothing quite like a swift kick in the ass to get excited about a project again.
]]>Agile methods don't produce agile enterprises because you're still writing code.
The context is, of course, that a business rule approach and technology can move a lot of your logic out of code entirely, allowing the enterprise itself to be agile. If you're using agile methods to write code, you're still locking business logic up in a form that's not easily mutable. Somewhat similar to doing agile brick laying instead of reconfigurable cubicle farms.
]]>
The Advantage USB contoured keyboard sets a new standard for ergonomic keyboards. The Advantage line incorporates the same advanced ergonomic design as our other contoured keyboards and delivers additional features not found on other USB keyboards.]]>
Happy birthday to me!
]]>Change is the only Constant]]>Your enterprise undergoes change all the time. Entering into new Markets. Introducing new Products. Complying with new Regulations. Making new Agreements with customers and suppliers. Changing business direction through mergers, acquisitions, alliances and divestitures. And the rate of change is increasing daily. Can your systems and procedures keep up?
A Business Rule Application is an Agile Application; one deliberately architected for continuous change in business logic. Even better, a Business Rule Application gives the control of Business Rules back to the business.
XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, used most commonly by XSLT. There are various APIs for processing XPath. For the purposes of this article I will use the open source Jaxen API. Jaxen is a Java XPath engine that supports many XML parsing APIs, such as SAX, DOM4J, and DOM. It also supports namespaces, variables, and functions.]]>XPath is useful when you need to extract some information from an XML document, such as a SOAP message, without building a complete parser using JAXM (Java API for XML Messaging) or JAX-RPC (Java API for XML-Based RPC). Moreover, the loosely-coupled nature of web services suggests that the use of dynamic data extraction is sometimes better than using static proxies like the ones produced using JAX-RPC.
In the article I'll show a JAXM Web Service for calculating statistics and a generic JAXM client that uses the service, demonstrating the use of XPath for generic data extraction.
Starting today (as in CM Today :-) ), we are gearing up for a greatly expanded CM Today, one you will find compelling, interesting, and hopefully even a little controversial. We hope to begin to share our new ideas and content with you in the coming weeks and months, so please check back often.]]>And we want you to participate. We are looking for people to participate in CM Today both as contributors and maintainers. If you have an opinion you want to share, we want to hear it and give you the reach of CM Today to make sure others hear it, too. Please contact Alex Neihaus (alex@cmtoday.com) for information on how to participate.
Once again, thank you and stay tuned.
JOCache is a Java library that implements strict object caching.]]>
The Java Binary Enhancement Tool (JBET) is a general Java program analysis and manipulation tool. Existing class files can be disassembled, reassembled, or edited programmatically through the JBET API. JBET can also be used to create new Java class files from scratch. JBET uses a convenient internal representation of all the contents of Java binary (.class) files, allowing the user to edit the classes easily, in a structured manner.]]>
With the growing acceptance of rapid development techniques in many development organizations the notion of continuous integration of changes has also become commonplace. Continuous Integration involves an automated process in which developers changes are either continually or on a periodically introduced into the application as they are checked into the source code repository.]]>
However you got here, stick around an' get yerself ready for September 19 - International Talk Like A Pirate Day!]]>
Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon died yesterday (September 7) after a much-publicized fight with lung cancer. The 56-year-old musician died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles while taking an afternoon nap.]]>
The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org) today announced the release of the public draft for the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 1.0) providing a readily understandable, royalty-free notation designed for both business process design and business process implementation. As an amalgamation of best practices within the business modeling community, BPMN provides a simple, standardized means of communicating process information to other business users, process implementers, customers, and suppliers.]]>
UCMcentral is a popular non commercial "Coffee Break" site providing support and education in the field of Configuration Management. It is the intention of this site to promote CM in both traditional and new areas of technology.]]>
Even adding Cygwin is not sufficient to make using Windows fun. I guess I've gotten used to the Unix way of things, and window managers with 10 virtual screens, and console windows that I can resize, even horizontally, by just dragging. I'm starting to think that I should add a Win32 surchage to my daily rate when forced to deal with this toy of an operating system.
]]>Hopefully sometime soon I'll get the opportunity to return to drools to implement some of these ideas. Particularly interesting would be to allow a working-memory to participate in an XA transaction so that rules may be fired upon commit or even be used to abort a transaction involving multiple resources.
Additionally, we noodled around with some ideas regarding using drools in a distributed cache environment for scalability, in addition to not-in-memory fact bases such as JDBC datasources (or more appropriately, JCA datasources).
So, no, not much content in this entry. Just noting that sometimes you have to connect with someone in real life to breath some enthusiasm back into a project. Plus, my blog had rolled all entries, and was completely blank.
]]>I mourn its passing. Good thing a new coffeeshop with gratis Wifi has opened nearby.
]]>The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere. The database community is interested in XML because it can be used to represent data that originates in repositories by providing structure and the possibility of adding type information.]]>The symposium theme is the combination of Database and XML Technologies. Today, we see growing interest in using these technologies together for many web-based and database-centric applications. XML is being used to publish data from database systems to the Web by providing input to content generators for Web pages, and database systems are increasingly used to store and query XML data, often by handling queries issued over the Internet. As database systems increasingly start talking to each other over the Web, there is a fast growing interest in using XML as the standard exchange format for distributed query processing. As a result, many relational database systems export data as XML documents and import data from XML documents and provide query and update capabilities for XML data. In addition, so called native XML database and integration systems are appearing on the database market, whose claim is to be especially tailored to store, maintain and easily access XML-documents.
We met in Medford, Oregon for 3 days July 12-14, 2003 to discuss the future of ANTLR. Specifically, we wanted to discuss what a future version of ANTLR (3.0) would look like. We made a list of what we didn't like about the current system and made a wishlist for ANTLR 3. There are four raw, stream-of-consciousness documents that resulted from the cabal. The documents are summarized and linked to below. Feel free to comment on the documents to the antlr-interest list, but the real "request for comments" will occur once a real whitepaper has been flessed out.]]>
Ayn Rand's Anthem is a short dystopic novel about a man who escapes a society from which all individuality has been squeezed. Its allegory is crudely transparent, and the ideas have lost their political urgency. (The book was published in 1938, a decade before Orwell's 1984.) But Anthem provides a good introduction to Rand's philosophy of "objectivism," which is built on individuality, freedom, and reason.]]>
ARLINGTON, Va.--Mike Wendy says he doesn't hate open-source software.]]>Wendy, spokesman and policy counsel for the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC), says he just wants to make sure government agencies don't unduly favor open-source or free programs over proprietary software.
"We want a process that is not based on automatic preferences," Wendy said.
BERKELEY, California (AP) -- A number of prominent scientists got some support from a congressman in challenging the way their publicly funded research papers are handled by for-profit journals. Congressman Martin Sabo, a Minnesota Democrat, has introduced legislation that would give immediate public access to all research papers created mostly with federal money, regardless of which journal publishes them.]]>
The latest official build is 2.0-beta-11 .
This is mainly a checkpoint for folks before heading down the path to 2.0 beta-12 on the way to 2.0-final. The roadmap will give you an idea of where we're heading.
]]>PapersINVITED.com was conceived and developed to assist those numerous scientists, professors and student researchers who have had a difficult time in tracking Calls for Papers from professional bodies, universities, journal editors and other conference organizers.]]>PapersINVITED.com brings an exhaustive list of Calls for Papers in all areas of specialization to your fingertips.
Morphon XML-Editor now available under a free software license]]>The Morphon XML-Editor is now being offered under a free license, there are no strings attached. Morphon Technologies would like to increase the user base of the Morphon XML-Editor. Having a larger and varied user base will help us understand better the future needs of our users.
To use the free XML editor, you will no longer need a license key. You simply have to register (optional) and then download Morphon. The software is fully functional with no crippling features, no time limit to usage.
Release 7.6 is the latest installment of my experimental implementation of the new XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 specifications. For the first time, this release also includes support for XQuery 1.0. In all cases, the product is aligned with the working drafts published on 2 May 2003, though of course not all features are implemented.]]>
FreeCache is a system of]]>* cooperating caches to move
* large files of
* free content
* closer to users.
Around the turn of the Century, (year 2k), we began seeing software projects that were attempting to try a new development approach called Agile. Most were implementing Extreme Programming, and their reasons were to reduce cost, improve software quality, better manage project risk, and to offer the business quicker functionality in the form of frequent releases incorporating smaller sets of change.]]>
Today, the surprising hostile takover by Jaxen of SaxPath was announced and executed. The code formerly in the org.saxpath.* namespace will now live in the org.jaxen.saxpath.* namespace. Jaxen 1.1 beta2 will soon be released to include this functionality. If you are currently using SaxPath for something else and want to upgrade, you just need to change the package name, as everything else is the same.]]>
Randall Knutson has released the first prototype for a remote desktop using XUL. Point your Mozilla XUL browser (e.g. Firebird) @ http://robin.sourceforge.net to call up a fresh desktop with a startup menu and play XulMine, Mozteroids, Pagman, Snake, Xultris, MozInvaders and more. What is Robin? Here's the "official" blurb from the sourceforge project site: Remote Operating System Build in Netscape (Robin) is a window manager using DHTML, Javascript, XUL and some crazy hacks.]]>
Google AdSense is for web publishers who want to make more revenue from advertising on their site while maintaining editorial quality. AdSense delivers text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to what your readers see on your pages --- and Google pays you.]]>
You've come to a friendly place, and we welcome you to our book-lovers' community. What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind.]]>
Basically, I write the docs so I have the requirements, which allows me to write the tests, which then help write the code itself. Things that make sense while writing the tests or code start looking goofy sometimes when you have to describe them in prose documentation. So, if you feel like an ass trying to describe how to use a component, that's a code smell that means you probably need to refactor.
So, I'd like to solicit experiences from others if you've used this type of development before. Most everywhere I've worked, either commercially or on open-source, documentation was an afterthought. Drop a comment or email bob@werken.com.
]]>JMXP is an application protocol that provides access to information about a JMX Agent's MBeanServer and the MBeans registered with that MBeanServer. JMXP also provides a mechanism for transmitting the Notifications emitted by a JMX Agent's MBeans to remote clients.]]>
Anyhow, a night shooting the breeze on a variety of topics with a guru was certainly more edifying and enjoyable than spending time at the JUG. I also, once again, learned why I like to stay out of downtown Atlanta. Crowds, one-way streets, turn-only lanes. Yum.
]]>CiteSeer is a scientific literature digital library that aims to improve the dissemination and feedback of scientific literature, and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness.]]>Rather than creating just another digital library, CiteSeer provides algorithms, techniques, and software that can be used in other digital libraries. CiteSeer indexes Postscript and PDF research articles on the Web, and provides the following features.
I used to work for CAPS Logistics, which was owned by Baan, which was owned by Invensys. CAPS was my only foray into large corporate empires where the org chart is so large it stops making any sort of sense.
A U.S. investment group has agreed to buy Baan a Dutch business software company, from Invensys and merge the unit with another software company in a move to broaden the product and customer base of the new venture.]]>Invensys has sold Baan to the U.S. private investment group, consisting of Cerberus Capital Management and General Atlantic Partners, for $135 million, the London company said Tuesday in a statement.
The deal comes several weeks after Invensys said it wanted to put Baan up for sale.
Carbon is a light-weight component model that serves as the foundation for a services based architecture. Carbon has the following objectives:]]>* Create a more flexible architecture via a decoupled, metadata-centric system
* Reduce complexity by providing access to services as small replaceable components
* Encourage the separation of concerns, resulting in code assets that are easier to maintain, adapt and reuse in a complex and dynamic operating environment
8:00 am -- Seven consultants for The JBoss Group publicly announced the immediate termination of their contracts and the foundation of their new company, Core Developers Network. Their charter "is to provide a commercial infrastructure to enable open source contributors to deliver their professional expertise to the marketplace, independent of their contributions to open source projects".]]>The JBoss Group has been forked. And I'm here in San Francisco to tell you about it.
Our research seeks to bring modern information management and retrieval technologies to the average computer user in order to make computers a more compelling place for users to interact with their information. Haystack looks into the use of artificial intelligence techniques for analyzing unstructured information and providing more accurate retrieval. We also deal with the modeling, management, and display of user data in more natural and useful ways.]]>
If you're interested in AI, you've come to the right place! The Artificial Intelligence Depot is a site purely dedicated to AI bringing you daily news and regular features, providing you with community interaction as well as an ever growing database of knowledge resources. Whether you are a complete beginner, experienced programmer, computer games hacker or academic researcher, you will find something to suit your needs here.]]>
So, here're my questions: Are there any hard-core java developers in Atlanta? Any of you guys want to meet for coffee? Or should I go to C/C++ users groups for mental stimulation, and avoid all of the java weenies?
addendum: Just to clarify, I do not think of myself as a guru. I'm looking for real gurus who can stretch my mind and ways of thinking.
]]>The dust was thick on my copy of the 1985 Clocksin and Mellish classic, Programming Prolog. But Ted Neward, author of the forthcoming book Effective Enterprise Java, brought it all rushing back: expert systems, declarative rules engines, predicate calculus, backward- vs. forward-chaining evaluation.]]>
We strongly recommend people interested in XQuery join the talk@x-query.com mailing list. This list is for practical discussion about XQuery: a place to work together to learn a new language, talk about problem solutions, discuss engines and implementations, chat about the latest announcements, and so on.]]>
Got the blogging system set up today.]]>MovableType is now available for hausmates or projects.
Business rule engines are moving toward maturity. In 2003, they will support business agility when called on to do so.]]>
Extensible Rule Markup Language (XRML) can support the automatic processing of implicit rules embedded in the hypertexts and help human browse them for their comprehension. The topology of XRML in contrast to XML and HTML is shown in Figure 1. XRML aims to convert itself to XML for browsing, and assist the generation and maintenance of consistent explicit rule structure]]>
This month the Crossroads News writers discuss the issues surrounding SCM for agile development projects and how to make SCM itself be more agile. We also welcome author and SCM evangelist Brad Appleton as our newest Contributing Editor with his regular column Agile SCM.]]>
QDox is a high speed, small footprint parser for extracting class/interface/method definitions from source files complete with JavaDoc @tags. It is designed to be used by active code generators or documentation tools.]]>
I'd rather not see this effort go gently into that good night. XQuery and cousins will be REC pretty soon, and I still strongly think the world needs an alternative. Basically, I think all we need to provide something people can latch on to is a refinement of my original straw man to take into account all the discussion that followed, and putting together a couple of foundational modules. I think if we were able to get together for a few hours at XML Europe, we could probably get most of the former done, and start useful discussion of the latter. I know that a decent number of the folks here will be at XML Europe, so what do you think of the idea?]]>
Take Amazon, for example. The whole e-commerce process is just data management. The cool part of amazon is the suggestions it makes for you. That's computations. Likewise, bioinformatics, resource optimization, cryptanalysis and web indexing/searching represent way cool problem domains to me.
It seems to me that it's in the computation that real value can be added to a system. There are a bazilliion systems that can collect an e-commerce order, all of about roughly the same feature set. The "you might also be interested in..." feature is the value-add which might help you sell more books. Tracking trucks isn't difficult, but routing them efficiently can directly affect the bottom-line.
Reading the trade press, folks seem to be questioning the value of IT investments. I have a feeling it's because they aren't creating IT projects that actually add value. Replacing a PHP order-entry system with a Java order-entry system of pretty much the same core features, maybe with a more modern architecture or language just doesn't seem to make much sense to the bottom line.
It's like replacing the carpet in a bricks'n'mortar bookstore.
So, I think I'm arguing (and certainly self-servingly) is that organizations should keep their existing data management applications, even if in PHP, and find ways to fund value-add projects. The promise of XML is that these heterogeneous systems can interface. We've taught to fear stovepipe systems, but we can just relabel them as best of breed and focus on adding to systems, instead of whole-sale replacement. You need to find the computational aspects of your business and target