HTML 5 Versus Flash

Developers are very familiar with Flash technology. It has both power and flexibility. Right now Flash owns the online marketing arena. Banners are pretty much written with Flash.

HTML 5 is new. It is based on an open standard. If you are doing mobile apps, HTML 5 might be for you. You might want to learn it if you are a developer. I hear that HTML 5 development opportunities are growing fast.

Companies do not have to choose Flash or HTML 5. You can code up your apps in both, and support multiple implementations of your app. You want to reach as many people as possible. Use the right tools and language for the job, even if you need to support multiple platforms.

Change in Schema

Our system used to only receive input data as large ASCII flat files. These were generated on a daily basis by some mainframe computers. The loading process on our system parsed the files according to a record layout. The result was inserted into an Oracle database which our applications query.

Last year we started receiving some files in XML format. There was a big concern about the size of such files. The old input files were minimal. You just got the data arranged in a specified format. Many worried the overhead of XML tags would make the files too large to handle. So far we have not received too much data in these files. The technique has not been volume tested.

Now we are preparing to receive a combination of XML and ASCII text files next year. There will be format changes for both of these files. The ASCII text files just have a different record layout. The XML files will be formatted according to a new schema. I suspect in the future that we will only receive files in XML format. Then we will only have to deal with XML schema changes. The real thing to look out for is the growth of XML input file size. We do have a plan to split the XML files into small chunks that we can reasonably process.

DrupalCon 2010

Drupal users just had their first users conference. It was called DrupalCon. The conference was hosted by Microsoft Corporation.

Know that Drupal is an open source framework. About one percent of web sites use Drupal. The word Drupal is Dutch meaning drop.

The framework was created back in 2001. Its creator formed the company Acquia to provide support for the framework. This company does things like provide training.

Google Chromium

Google has unleashed their Chromium project. It is a native client SDK. This enables you to use C++ code run by your Internet browser. The C++ code can be called from HTML and JavaScript. It is supposed to make your functionality more powerful. You can access all kinds of C++ libraries.

The browser is becoming the default experience for users. Google wants the browser to be the next generation operating system. Some people are concerned about this new power being available in the browser.

This might be good if people write POSIX compliant code so it can run on all kinds of platforms. Google is positioning this technology for cloud computing. Knowing Google, this might be in Beta for a while.

Others wonder whether Chromium offers anything beyond what the Java Virtual Machine and applets can give you. C++ programmers might think this is just like Microsoft's ActiveX technology. Btw, I got all this info from readwriteweb. So props to them.

SAML

REST is hot right now. However it does not give you good access to security standards. What are you to do? Well one thing is for sure. Don't roll your own security code. That will take too long, and it will be full of holes.

I just read up one guy proposing RESTful apps to use security assertion markup language (SAML). This standard is an accepted way to do authentication. It is an alternative to WS-*.

They say SAML has a rich syntax. I can't tell for sure yet. I have only just read about. However it sounds like something to look into if you are going RESTful.

Altova MissionKit

Altova has released a 64 bit version of its MissionKit tool suite. It is supposed to give you a performance advantage, especially when dealing with huge XML files. Altova says that this version can help you edit XML files that are a couple hundred megabytes large.

This latest update is Version 2010 Release 2. You can get the update for free if you have a subscription. Otherwise this thing is going to cost you a bit of money. MissionKit is composed of a number of tools such as the famous XMLSpy XML editor. I know the developers and testers in my company all want a copy of XMLSpy. The other tools may not be as important.

We process relatively small files in our production environment. So for now we run a 32-bit version of XMLSpy. However things may ramp up once the customer gets comfortable with our XML loading software. Maybe a copy or two of MissionKit 64-bit is in order for next year.

Service Oriented Architecture

These days everybody is using SOA to sell things. It seems to be a marketing term now. Initially it was a technical term to describe apps communicating with SOAP.

Now I am hearing that SOA is being redefined to represent some best practices in software development. It describes using simplistic messaging. It also refers to open and scalable systems. That sounds like good techniques to me.

Like most developers, I was excited to hear about SOA. I recall a VIP from our company addressing huge amounts of developers in my building. When he mentioned SOA, the developers were happy and cheering.

Now unfortunately SOA is being used by everybody. It does not mean much to me any more. I hope this new best practices style of SOA takes over. We shall see.