Martello

CoolStack is a collection of some of the most commonly used open source applications optimized for the Sun Solaris platform. The latest version of this software suite, Cool Stack 1.3, has just been released. Here is a brief overview:

Notable Additions

• Python 2.5.2
• Nginx 0.6.31
• New Apache modules including mod_python, mod_ruby, mod_dtrace etc.

Updated Versions

• Apache 2.28
• Tomcat 5.5.26
• MySQL 5.1.24
• PHP 5.2.6
• Memcached 1.2.5
• Ruby 1.8.6p114 with Ruby Gems 1.1.1 and Rails 2.0.2

Other Enhancements

• Ruby performance improvements in the order of 20-30% (with a further 8-15% coming down the line when Ruby 1.8.7 is released)
• Better support for installing Ruby Gems that require native compilation on SPARC systems

The addition of Nginx an Python support along with the performance improvements in Ruby as well as the additional Apache modules are all very useful additions and have yet again come at just the right time for our organisation. Well done to Shanti and his team for providing almost exactly everything we were hoping for in this release, again!

In an interesting article on the merits (or not) of scripting languages, James Turner outlines where some of their strengths and weaknesses lie. He uses Perl as the example in this instance but on reading the article I found that many of the pros and cons readily apply to most other scripting languages I’ve used (Tcl, Python, Bash, Sh).

In particular, his comments about them being strong on cross-platform support and weak on performance-related applications definitely ring true from my past experiences with Tcl/Tk. However, one point that he did not make, which I feel is definitely one of scripting languages’ stronger points, is in the area of custom testing and debugging, in the context of prototype product design and integration.

The likes of Perl, Python and/or Tcl really can enable you to glue together some pretty compelling, custom-made testing utilities, often without the need for complicated frameworks or other plugins. In particular, the ability to create your own extensions (using C or even SWIG) can make for some pretty powerful, tailor-made manufacturing test tools (trust me, I’ve been there!).

Of course this may not suit everyone’s needs, and there will be those that will opt for off-the-shelf products that do similar. However, if you are dealing with a newly designed product or hardware appliance featuring custom firmware not seen before, that needs to run on several different platforms, then a decent scripting language will most definitely be your friend.

Source: CIO.com

Congratulations to the team at Headway Software whose excellent Structure 101 product has been nominated for a Jolt award (in the Design and Modeling category). The Jolt Awards are the “Oscars” of the software industry and it is a fantastic accolade for any company to even be nominated.

The very best of luck to Chris, Paul, Ian and the rest of the Headway team in March when the winners are announced.

Sources: Chris Chedgey, Reuters

I had to do some Windows Mobile development recently (Visual Studio 2005, C# and .NET Compact Framework) and needed to create an XML file with text that contained some Scottish Gaelic characters in it. My understanding of XML files isn’t what it should be so I soon ran into a few funnies. Whenever i tried to load the document using the XmlDocument.load() method, the application threw an exception for which no explanation was given.

Since the amount of text was quite small, I simply pasted the the paragraphs I needed to display within my application (from Word) into a VI editor and saved the file with a .XML extension from there. I figured VI would do a decent job of removing all of the formatting from Word. However, doing this doesn’t really save the file as a proper XML file with the appropriate encoding.

Fortunately, Visual Studio provided a tidy solution. All I had to do is open my XML file from Visual Studio and then open the Properties of the document (View, Properties). Studio recognised that my file was an XML document (of sorts) and took a guess at the type of encoding it was using (Western European - Windows). I then changed the encoding to UTF-8 and re-saved the file with a different name (File, Save As), after which the XmlDocument.load() method worked just fine.

It looks like the re-saved file is now using 2 bytes for each of the special characters whereas before it only used one (I presume that the “U” in UTF-8 at work, as in, Unicode) and my Windows Mobile application worked a treat after that.

CoolStack is a collection of some of the most commonly used open source applications optimized for the Sun Solaris OS platform. I’ve been tracking the release of the next version, CoolStack 1.2, for some time and see that it has just been released. Here is a brief overview of what it gives you:

• Apache 2.2.6 with mod_jk-1.2.25, mod_proxy and SMF support.
• PHP 5.2.4 with FastCGI support.
• APC 3.0.14.
• MySQL 5.0.45 with ndbcluster and SMF support.
• Memcached 1.2.2.
• Squid 2.6.16 with SMF support.
• Tomcat 5.5.23 with SMF support.
• Ruby 1.8.6 with RubyGems and Rails 1.2.3.
• lighttpd 1.4.18.
• Perl 5.8.8 with DBI-1.59, DBD-mysql-4.005 and Sys-Syslog-0.18 extensions

As you can see, CoolStack is now a pretty serious software bundle and there isn’t much it doesn’t give you (although DTrace support for Ruby would be a useful addition). The addition of Tomcat and SMF support (SMF allows easier management of Solaris services) along with the additional Apache modules and updated revisions of Apache, MySQL, Ruby and Rails tick a large number of boxes in our organisation as we previously had to build several Apache modules by hand, struggled with lack of Perl DBI/DBD extensions and spent far too long constructing SMF manifests for many of the applications.

So, well done to Shanti and his team for providing almost exactly everything we were hoping for in this release! CoolStack has now become an integral part of our software infrastructure, reducing our service deployment times considerably.