August 2004 – SwitchBL8’s gebazel

RemObjects SDK 3.0

Aug 312004

Because Perry blogged about DataAbstract, I dug a little deeper into it, and to RemObjects other product “RemObjects SDK 3.0”.

RO SDK is basically a collection of components to create multi-tier solutions, and it can be clients or servers. There are other products that can help you with that. Think of Midas, or Borlands new DataSnap. But the RO SDK is more than that. With it you can not only create multi-tier applications, but you can also choose whether the application will use the SOAP protocol, or a binary version without the overhead of XML. And you can create ISAPI modules, but also standalone SOAP-servers. Or…a whatever server.

So, that got me thinking. I emailed Perry, and asked him if it was possible to create a normal Win32-server, like a mailserver. His answer was positive, so I read some more about RO SDK. RO SDK gives you the tools to create a server, that can communicate in standardized protocols or in a protocol that you like. On the standard firewall-save HTTP-port, or on any port you like. And on top of that: the SDK is expandable. So if TCP is not what you’re looking for, you can implement your own transport-drivers and use them in RO SDK.

Wow!

I already downloaded the trial version of the SDK and I will give it a try when I get back from my holiday in Morocco (4-26th of September). I was planning to create a mailserver with a RDBMS-backend. By choosing a RDBMS that is scalable the the mailserver itself will be scalable. By making it multi-tier the user has even more freedom in distributing the load.

Daemon Tools 3.47

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Aug 302004

The makers of Daemon-Tools released version 3.47 of their world-famous CD- and DVD-drive emulation software. This will be the latest version until the release of V4, as that is what the new software is called internally.

SQL Server grows up

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Aug 272004

Finally SQL Server (version 2005) is catching up with Oracle in the area of transactions. Eric blogs about it. It is funny how a feature that should have been in their product a long time ago is now emphasized as something great. The success of Microsoft is definitely caused by their marketing strategies.

Hey, wake up: locking as a transaction-mechanism is something from the eighties. Oracle switched from table-locking to row-locking when they went from version 5 to version 6. But in version 5 they already had versioning: the bi and ai journals. Oracle is now at version 10g…

ADSL works great tonight

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Aug 272004

As you can see, my connection works great tonight. About 579Kbyte/sec, and that is next to the downloads from Astraweb that are racing in…

GP

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Aug 262004

I ordered 3 sets, and they all come in a nice handy pouch. I’ll do some tests with the Transcend 45x later.

DataAbstract

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Aug 262004

Perry blogs about Remobjects’ DataAbstract. I can’t decide whether DA is a good thing or not. Back in the old days, BDE was a good thing and so was ODBC. But we soon realized that you could not use native database-calls, only standardized ones. And it was slower than native calls, because an extra in-between layer was introduced. From what I read about it, DA is no different. It makes a programmers job easier, that’s good about it. But I can’t figure out if DA is another BDE/ODBC or if this is really a good product. I know their RemObjects SDK is.

NDAS

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Aug 252004

If you need more storage, and can’t cram another harddisk into your PC, a fileserver (mini-NAS), or a NAS is the solution. But that requires some IT knowledge. You have to setup the OS, think about authorization and what more. How about plugging a disk into the USB port? Wait, wait, now your PC must be powered on for your co-worker to access the disk.
Why not plug the disk right into the network? Wow! NDAS by Ximeta makes it possible. They’ve build a little box around a harddisk, that plugs right into your network. Everybody on the network sees the disk as if it was a local disk on their system. How cool is that? They also have more enterprise-like solutions, like disks with a built-in network-switch, but the principle stays the same.

Mailwasher Pro

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Aug 252004

I use Mailwasher Pro (from Firetrust) as an anti-spam tool. After the trial, I decided to buy it, since it tagged the proper messages as spam, and left the rest untouched.

Nick Bolton sends an email message to you, whenever there is news from Firetrust. I don’t get spam that much, but everytime Nick announces something, I also get a lot of scam/spam messages. What is that? Is this guy selling his client-list to spammers?

I’m thinking of switching to an all-in-one solution: Norton Internet Security 2005. It is anti-virus, anti-spam, and firewall in one product. And it integrates with Microsoft Outlook (instead of running it after the checks are done).

Rain

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Aug 252004

Yesterday it rained so hard at the time I was supposed to leave work, that I waited about 40 minutes for the weather to clear up. Unfortunately that meant that I was not in time to pick up my Transcend-card: the postoffice closes at 17:30, and by the time I got home to pick up the receipt to collect it, it was already 17:41. Better luck this evening.

Salland Automatisering

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Aug 242004

Last Friday I ordered an 1GB Transcend 45x Compact Flash card and 3 sets of 2100mAh batteries from Salland Automatisering. From the shop survey of Tweakers, I already knew they are good, but on Monday morning TPG already tried to deliver the goods (I wasn’t there, so I can collect the package this evening).

I’ll try to do some write tests with the card (using the USB interface on the S2 Pro), so I can compare that to my trusty old IBM microdrive (also 1GByte). Another MD costs about 200 euro, the Transcend card is only 99! And a real CF card is less battery-hungry than a spinning disk.

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