Martian eyrie

dBusinessNews :: Daily Business News Delivered to Your Desktop "The last major release of Komodo redefined what was possible in a web development IDE," says Eric Promislow, senior Komodo developer. "But given the wild popularity of Ruby on Rails, we wanted to do more. Komodo IDE 4.1 is a definitive moment in Rails development, introducing more advanced tools and better performance than Rails developers have seen so far. There are new Rails-powered sites appearing every day. Increasingly, we expect those to be developed using Komodo IDE."

Komodo IDE’s extensible architecture is another boon for Rails developers. Built on the Mozilla platform, Komodo IDE features XPI extension support, providing the same extensibility as Firefox, with all standard Mozilla APIs based on XUL, XBL and XPCOM, plus ActiveState’s own for Python and JavaScript. A new Rails-oriented library makes it easy for developers to customize Komodo, add new commands, and share them with others. Komodo IDE 4.1 includes full macro API documentation, further backed by Ruby tutorials and an active community sharing valuable extensions through ActiveState’s community site at community.activestate.com.

As with previous releases, Komodo IDE features intelligent tools for regular expressions, team development, customization and unparalleled extensibility. The result is a powerful coding environment not only for Ruby on Rails, but also CakePHP and client libraries such as the Yahoo! UI Library and Dojo. A single license covers users across Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

CM Crossroads - CodeGear™ Unveils First IDE for Agile Ruby on Rails Web 2.0 Development Unveiled at the RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon, the new technology offers innovative productivity features designed to allow both new and experienced Rails developers to build Ruby on Rails applications efficiently and quickly.

David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, said, “It’s encouraging to see the Rails ecosystem extend itself to include commercial tool vendors. I heartily welcome CodeGear to the arena and I’m excited to see what they come up with. It’s a wonderful time for users and vendors alike in the world of Rails.”

Said Michael Swindell, CodeGear vice president of products and strategy, “Ruby on Rails has become a serious Web application platform because Ruby on Rails makes it extremely fast and easy to develop rich, data-driven Web 2.0 applications with minimal coding. However, the ‘magic’ behind the productivity also introduces new challenges for developers building, growing and maintaining ‘real world’ production-level Web applications.”

View announcement NetBeans.org is proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.0 Preview (Milestone 9). Here are some of the highlights:

• Ruby/JRuby/Ruby on Rails Support
• A Smarter and Faster Editor
• Improved Swing development (Swing Data Binding)
• Integrated Profiling
• Integrated Visual Design for Web Applications
• New, Integrated UI for CLDC/MIDP and CDC development 

The final NetBeans IDE 6.0 release is planned for November, 2007. As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback and the sharing of your experience using the NetBeans IDE on our mailing lists and in your blogs!

#haml.about Haml is a markup language that’s used to cleanly and simply describe the XHTML of any web document without the use of inline code. Haml functions as a replacement for inline page templating systems such as PHP, ASP, and ERB, the templating language used in most Ruby on Rails applications. However, Haml avoids the need for explicitly coding XHTML into the template, because it iself is a description of the XHTML, with some code to generate dynamic content.

Mingle from ThoughtWorks Studios to Be the First Commercial Software in JRuby Mingle is a software application that helps teams manage Agile IT projects. It supports software delivery by providing entire teams a single place to share all project output, using a framework based on over ten years of ThoughtWorks’ Agile experience. Mingle provides project intelligence by enabling real-time decisions driven by Agile metrics collected from everyday activities. Further product information can be found at studios.thoughtworks.com.

“Mingle is built on the Ruby on Rails web framework,” said Cyndi Mitchell, vice-president of strategy for ThoughtWorks Studios. “Rails allowed our development team to be immensely productive, but the Ruby platform still presents some deployment challenges to a typical enterprise. We needed an approach that would allow Mingle to fit right into our customers’ existing IT landscape. JRuby gives us that.”

JRuby is a pure Java, open-source implementation of the Ruby language. Two of its core developers, Nutter and Thomas Enebo, were hired last year by Sun Microsystems to work full time on JRuby.

Because Mingle is engineered in JRuby, it can easily be deployed into large, complex, and controlled corporate IT environments. For companies that have invested in the Java platform, supporting Mingle will not require investment in additional platforms and tools.

HiddenWires - Onkyo Announces TX-SR875 A/V Receiver Featuring HQV Processing Silicon Optix, the leader in programmable video processors, announced today that Onkyo has significantly raised the bar for video performance in A/V receivers with the addition of the Reon-VX HQV video processor in two of their models. Onkyo’s TX-SR875 has a MRSP of $1,699 and will ship in June, while Onkyo’s TX-NR905 has a MRSP of $2,099 and will ship in August.

"We are going to shake up the receiver market with our new line of products. One of the key additions is HQV processing. We selected HQV processing because it delivers the best image quality in the industry, providing the maximum quality from both high-definition and standard-definition sources, " said Paul Wasek, Onkyo’s Marketing Manager.

HQV’s true 1080i-to-1080p HD deinterlacing delivers the sharpest, most detailed HD images possible by employing per-pixel motion-adaptive algorithms and a sophisticated multidirectional diagonal filter that ensures video free from jagged edges. The powerful HQV processing engine also provides per-pixel motion-adaptive noise reduction, detail enhancement, and advanced scaling, delivering premium-quality upconversion of SD material.

How to: access Pandora from outside the US I’m not an avid Pandora user. Personally, I like Last.FM better. But it angers me when I see that such a great service will now be unavailable for users outside of the US. TechCrunch has the details, as well as a facsimile of the letter sent to Pandora’s international users.

Of course, I don’t blame Pandora for this: they’re just complying with the US (and international) laws and regulations.

I blame the laws and regulations.

In any case, this is the Internet, and it’s easy to be a hacker nowadays, so here’s a couple of services you can use to access Pandora from wherever you are (btw, Pandora still works for me although I’m from Croatia; I guess they haven’t covered all the IP ranges just yet):…

Welcome to Zopa (UK) - The first lending and borrowing exchange

Lending to Zopa borrowers is a great thing to do with your money:

•  Better returns than savings accounts. The average return on all money lent to date is 6.75% pa, and some lenders are earning up to 14% pa (figures before tax, but after bad debt and fee).
• It’s safe. Borrowers are credit-checked and risk-assessed, and your money is spread across many borrowers
• It’s human. Your money helps real people rather than the banks.

Ruby on Rails with Oracle FAQ

Exploring Ruby on Rails (RoR)? This FAQ provides basic information about connecting to Oracle, installation, and creating Oracle Database XE RoR applications.

Ruby on Rails on Oracle: A Simple Tutorial

Rails is a capable Web application platform and has, in less than two years, gained significant traction among J2EE and PHP programmers. The attraction of both J2EE and PHP programmers makes a lot of sense when you look at the strengths of Rails. For one thing, it uses a strict model-view-controller architecture that any self-respecting design-patterns wonk would admire—this explains its attraction to J2EE developers. Second, it’s easy to build basic systems with Rails—which is attractive to PHP developers.

However, Rails has some pretty significant limitations from a database perspective. Rails makes a lot of assumptions about your database layout and application needs. For example, Rails assumes that all tables use a single, non-compound, primary key. Compound primary keys are not supported! In addition, Rails does not support two-phase commit; it supports multiple databases, but cannot coordinate transactions among them.

This article is not intended to be a booster piece for Rails nor is it an expose. It’s simply an introduction to the technology. It contains both praise and criticism. At times the criticism might appear a bit heavy handed (especially to Rails enthusiasts), but don’t be fooled. Using any Web application framework is going to be tricky, whether it’s J2EE, ASP.NET, or PHP. In the long run, you can be a lot more productive with Rails than you can be with many other Web application development platforms, but it takes time to learn the ropes.