Landon Fuller builds a dev preview of Java 6 on Mac OSX Leopard

Wow. Thank goodness for open source. Three cheers for Landon!

http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t103382.html

Nati Shalom's Blog: Architecture You Always Wondered About: Lessons Learned at Qcon

Nati Shalom, CTO and founder of GigaSpaces, has a very interesting blog describing the architectures of some of the Big Scale Web Guys out there -- what the patterns were, what lessons were learned, etc. Check it out...

http://natishalom.typepad.com/nati_shaloms_blog/2007/11/architecture-yo.html

My Mac becomes a VMWare host

As promised, I'm moving away from Mac as my primary working environment. I need Java 6, it doesn't have the best integration with the AMP stack, which I need to work with right now, and so on.

But I'm not fully giving up on Mac OSX. It is now my hosting environment for VMWare Fusion. I am typing this blog in fullscreen mode in Ubuntu under VMWare. I am realizing that for many a computer could easily turn from a single computer to a hosting environment for many computers. This is especially useful for developers, because it gives you flexibility, freedom, and the ability to easily test on many platforms. A real wave of the future.

I installed Indiana, and I am working on installing Solaris Express Developer Edition. I'd like to work with Solaris - I like ZFS and I remember how blazingly fast Solaris is, particularly with disk I/O. Indiana had an incredibly nice install experience, it's actually hard to believe after previous experiences with the Solaris installation. This is just an amazing, amazing improvement and the team deserves very high accolades.

However, Indiana doesn't have things fully integrated yet (it's missing Java, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and so on). I tried using the new package management system but nothing seemed to be available. I'm going to keep working on getting this set up, but I'm not quite ready to dedicate my day-to-day working life under Indiana. Indiana looks very promising and I think ultimately that's where I'm going to end up.

Next up is Solaris Express Developer Edition. I've heard the install is also vastly improved, and it has a lot more things integrated, including NetBeans. So I'll let you know how that goes.

'Project Indiana' OpenSolaris Preview Debuts

A binary distribution of OpenSolaris with Linux Userland CLI support and a spanking new network-based package management system. Now *that* sounds cool!

http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug110107-story03.html

Heck with SQL: is a persistent hash all you need?

Jamie Flournoy compares ActiveRecord to VB: "The easy stuff is easy, but the hard stuff is impossible," he quote James Gosling as saying about VB.

One of the things Jamie says in this very long, well-thought-out article, by someone who obviously has experience with both Rails and databases, gave me pause.

Jamie referred to some of the leaders of the Rails community saying that SQL is a design mistake and that most web apps only need a persistent hash.

This statement follows shortly after me reading an article by Diego Parilla about the impact of ORM on the database, and finding out that Amazon uses basically a highly available, persistent hash for much of its database storage on the web tier.

Michael Stonebraker is even saying that relational databases can not meet everybody's needs any more, and talks about the need for specialized data stores for specific use cases.

I actually like a lot of this. We need to simplify, simplify, when it comes to building web applications - I've been appalled at what a huge mess it is for quite some time, and have found myself avoiding building web apps if at all possible because of this. Also, SQL ties you to a database (yeah, I know, it's a "standard"), and also ties your application to a particular incarnation of the data model in the database. So for all these reasons, eliminating the need for SQL is goodness.

My concern is that if you're not careful, you start with a hash table, but then start implementing your own database on top of it. Jamie mentions this, and I have seen this too:

Satisfying queries is the database’s job, period. It’s just hideously slow to try and do an inner join in the application across a network link to a database. If you find yourself doing this, that’s a pretty good sign that your architecture is broken.

It's easy to think that all you need is a hash table, and when you're building simple, basic web apps, that's probably all you need. Heck, that's all Amazon needs, for the most part. But there are times when you want more. You really do need to do a complex query, or a stored procedure, or text search. You want to be able to run useful reports without having to do joins and sorts within your application.

I think Rails is getting a lot of things right by hiding a lot of complexity from you (as do the Java ORM technologies).

But I agree with Jamie that for those times when you need SQL, it's nice to have the option -- at least until ORM gets so friggin' smart that writing in SQL is like writing in assembly - sure you could do it, but who wants to, and why?

Bob Cringley, the inspiration for FON

I didn't know this. Bob Cringely wrote an article on WiFi sharing that inspired the founders of FON. You never know where your next idea will come from...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20071005_003153.html

Recording Artist: Don't be a ZFS Hater

Drew Thaler, an ex-MacOS filesystem engineer, has some very positive things to say about ZFS. "ZFS is a fine candidate to replace HFS+ eventually. It's not going to happen overnight, no. ... . But several years from now? Absolutely."

http://drewthaler.blogspot.com/2007/10/don-be-zfs-hater.html

Amazon's Dynamo - Serious Non-Relational State Storage

This is getting a lot of buzz, but for us database folks, a very interesting and detailed analysis of a different way to store and query state that meets requirements not met by relational databases.

http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html

The Future of Web Startups

Paul Graham has a great essay that captures a lot of the trends we're seeing with startups and where he sees it all going. Easier, cheaper, standardized, more of them, and who needs college?

http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html

Why programmers hate relational databases: Greg Jorgensen

Greg Jorgensen writes a fun blog about the common complaints programmers have against relational databases and his responses to them.

Most professional programmers know how it feels to see an amateur, unfamiliar with Knuth or any programming book containing equations, implement their own sort routine. That’s how people who understand relational theory feel when they see a badly-designed database. Relational theory and RDBMSs are old and well-established now, so it’s hard not to think a lot of programmers are willfully ignorant.

I have seen this too: "I don't need a friggin' relational db, just give me a flat file." Sometimes this works, but all too often I see the same programmers adding locking semantics, querying capabilities, indexes, and so on, and I just shake my head.

Rails and JPA (Instead of ActiveRecord) : Brian Leonard gives it a go

I have been seeing some blogs complaining about ActiveRecord and its limitations. I don't know ActiveRecord and what users need from it well enough to know if these are valid complaints, but Brian Leonard shows a possible alternative: JPA with JRuby.

Google Gears coming for GMail

We knew it had to happen, and here it comes. GMail may soon have offline support. I tried offline support with Google Reader and was underwhelmed - pretty buggy and a bit confusing. I hope they do a better job with GMail.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=750&tag=nl.e622

Sun surprises at RailsConf Europe 2007

David Heinnemeir Hansson (inventor of Rails) is actually starting to believe Sun is serious about Ruby and Rails. Great work, Craig! David's right about the mystery man with the cat too :)

http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/11-sun-surprises-at-railsconf-europe-2007

ServerSide: Hooray for Glassfish and NetBeans

Some impressively positive comments about Glassfish and NetBeans. I've seen some of the heat that can come from this forum -- this is no "inside" marketing job, this is the real thing.

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=46923

I.B.M. to Offer Lotus Symphony free, based on Open Office

"I.B.M. declared that it was formally joining the open-source group [OpenOffice], had dedicated 35 full-time programmers to the project and would contribute code to the initiative." This is a serious boost to Open Office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18blue.html?ex=1347768000&en=964b86e1c626bd78&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Why PostgreSQL Instead of MySQL: Comparing Reliability and Speed in 2007

An interesting and very complete analysis/comparison between PostgreSQL and MySQL. Written by PostgreSQL advocates, so take it with a grain of salt, but still a very good in-depth comparison.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/techdocs.83

MSNBC: The quiet revolution (and my golden handcuffs): telecommuting

Sun's IWork (tele-work, flex office) program gets top billing in this MSNBC story.

I think of Sun's excellent mobile work program as one of a number of "golden handcuffs" Sun has on my wrists. That, and great pay and great benefits and great people to work with. It really is hard to beat.

Eric Redmond: Death by Overcoding: 5 Reasons Static Typing Sucks

Eric Redmond has a fun and well-written missive on why he is sick and tired of static typing. One of these days I really do need to try out Ruby. I'm getting lazy in my old age...

http://coderoshi.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-reasons-static-typing-sucks.html

Mike Stonebraker: One-size-fits-all databases don't cut it anymore

There's a new database blog, and one of the first postings is from Mike Stonebraker about how specialized databases will become more and more important...

http://www.databasecolumn.com/2007/09/one-size-fits-all.html

Terrence Barr's Blog: Need a database with your phone?

Terrence Barr says Java DB is the answer for a compliant database for mobile platforms.

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/terrencebarr/archive/2007/09/need_a_database.html