.$null@dscape/08

First download the flags from famfamfam into a folder called flags (pngs only,
no subfolders!).

Now in the bash:

cd flags
wget http://www.iso.org/iso/iso3166_en_code_lists.txt
ls > file.txt
irb

Now your on the interactive ruby shell (irb).

# If you want to use this as a script just copy
# the bash lines and put them as
# system 'cd flags'
# system 'wget ...' and so on

# We start treating the output from the ls
# open the ls output
f = File.new 'file.txt'
# place the file in lines
lines = f.readlines
# map those who have 2 digits codes
lines = lines.select { |line| line.size == 7 }
# get the 2 digits
lines = lines.map { |line| line[0..1] }
f.close

# Then the iso file
# open the iso file
f = File.new 'iso3166_en_code_lists.txt'
# get rid of the notes
f.readline
# place the file in iso
iso = f.readlines
# create a new hash
hashed_iso = {}
# select non empty lines
iso.select { |a| !a.rstrip.empty? }.map do |b|
  # remove the whitespaces and split in ';'
  aux = b.rstrip.split ';'
  # place info in the hash
  hashed_iso[aux[1].downcase] = aux[0].capitalize
end
f.close

# Now we cross information giving more
# importance to what's in the iso.
iso_famfamfam = hashed_iso.select {
  # select those who have flags in famfamfam
  |k,v| lines.member? k
}.sort_by {
  # sort them by the name the user will see
  |pair| pair[1]
}

# Now we create the contents to store in the yaml file
# create the yaml first line
yaml_lines = "hash: \n"
iso_famfamfam.each do |pair|
  # for each pair, create the yaml
  # representation and put in yaml_lines
  yaml_lines < < '  ' + pair[0] + ': '
                         + pair[1] + "\n"
end 

yaml_lines &lt;&lt; "array: —\n"

iso_famfamfam.each do |pair|
  yaml_lines << '- - ' + pair[0] + "\n  - "
                            + pair[1] + "\n"
end 

# put it in a file
f = File.new 'flags.yml', 'w'
f.write yaml_lines
f.close

#sample for loading the yaml into ruby
f = File.new 'flags.yml'
fy = YAML.load f

Now you have your yaml representation of the flags. Do what you please. Personally I’m going to use the file to load it to Ruby when my Ruby on Rails app starts and use it as part of the registration system in the Open Source Online Testing System.

Não estão todos incrédulos que esteja a postar sobre isto!? Eu estou. Acabei de ler este artigo genial. Para ler, rir, reler e rir outra vez.

Fica uma pequena citação e o artigo original:

How on earth does Microsoft continue to pour massive resources into building the same frigging synchronization platforms again and again? Damn, they just finished building something called Windows Live FolderShare and I haven’t exactly noticed a stampede to that. I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of it. The 3,398th web site that lets you upload and download files to a place on the Internet. I’m so excited I might just die.

Mas não se fica por aqui. Mais aqui:

• http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html

In the most impressive development of the week I have just discovered that Java 6 was finally released for Mac OS X. I’m in complete disbelief.

Now I almost believe that IBM DB2 Express-C for mac will be released in less that a month. :P

More on this here.

Imperative in python
Functional on a object oriented flavor in ruby

Note: You can do the opposite, ruby in imperative and python in functional (I’m guessing on the python part, but it’s probably true)

# choose all values from a list that are not in a matrix

# imperative in python
res = []

for value in list:
  present = False
  for mlist in matrix:
    if value in mlist:
      present = True
      break
   if not present:
     res.append(value)

# functional in ruby
res = list.select { |value| !matrix.flatten.member? value }

# restrict the matrix to values in list

# imperative strikes back
res = []

for mlist in matrix:
  current_mlist = mlist[:]
  for mvalue in mlist:
    if mvalue not in list:
      current_mlist.remove(mvalue)
  res.append(current_mlist)

# functional responds
res = matrix.map do |mlist|
  mlist.select { |mvalue| list.member? mvalue }
end

Vieram-me perguntar de onde tinha tirado a foto do meu perfil do last-fm.

A resposta é simples. De um dos mais brilhantes filmes que já vi. Se gostas de cinema e ainda não viste, este é para ti. (Para ver e rever)

Enterro da Gata 2008

Dia 10 - Jorge Palma, Gabriel o Pensador - 9 euros estudante / 12 não estudantes
Dia 11 - Linda Martini, James - 9 estudante / 12 não estudantes
Dia 12 - Rita Redshoes, David Fonseca - 8 euros estudante / 11 não estudantes
Dia 13 - Mind da Gap, Irmãos Verdades - 8 euros estudante / 11 não estudantes
Dia 14 - Neurónios Abariados, Quim Barreiros - 9 estudante / 12 não estudantes
Dia 15 - Banda Vencedora do UMplugged, Xutos e Pontapés - 9 estudante / 12 não estudantes

Camionetas UM -> Gatódromo

Polo Azurém: Ida entre 22h e a 1h. Volta entre as 4h e as 6h30

Polo Gualtar: Ida entra 21h30 e as 2h. Volta entre as 3h e as 6h30

Vemo-nos lá?

( Provavelmente pela última vez. )

Acabadinho de vir da garantia, onde passou um mês para trocarem a board sem que tenham conseguido resolver nenhum dos outros problemas que indiquei.

Olhem para a bateria e digam-me se isto é normal:

Está mesmo a sair o novo Ubuntu.

Enquanto não sai - e antecipando os habituais problemas de uma estreia, ou seja, servidores atulhados - deixo uma palavra amiga a apontar para o mirror de Software Livre do Centro ao Apoio ao Open-Source que vai ter os CD’s disponiveis para download em:

• http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/ubuntu/

PS. Já lá esta o release candidate.

• superwick.com » Generating ZIP file archives via Ruby on Rails
  (tags: zip rails ruby howto development)
• rubyzip documentation
  (tags: ruby zip rubyzip api library documentation development)
• erratic bearing - joy of rubyzip
  (tags: zip ruby rubyzip development)

Simple sorting.

First comes a demonstration of the most common error :P
Then a simple sort
After that comes a first sort_by
And then a complete sort_by (sorted first by fname and then by lname).

>> h = [{'fname' => 'Nuno', 'lname' => 'Job'},
  {'fname' => 'Nuno', 'lname' => 'Fonseca'},
  {'fname' => 'Catarina', 'lname' => 'Pinto'},
  {'fname' => 'Nuno', 'lname' => 'Pinto'},
  {'fname' => 'Nuno', 'lname' => 'Antunes'}
]
>> h.sort
NoMethodError: undefined method '< =>' for
{"lname"=>"Job", "fname"=>"Nuno"}:Hash
from (irb):35:in `sort'
from (irb):35
from :0
>> h.sort{|a,b| a['fname'] < => b['fname']}
=> [{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Catarina"},
{"lname"=>"Job", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Fonseca", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Antunes", "fname"=>"Nuno"}]
>> h.sort_by{|p| p['fname']}
=> [{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Catarina"},
{"lname"=>"Job", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Fonseca", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Antunes", "fname"=>"Nuno"}]
>> h.sort_by{|p| [p['fname'], p['lname']]}
=> [{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Catarina"},
{"lname"=>"Antunes", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Fonseca", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Job", "fname"=>"Nuno"},
{"lname"=>"Pinto", "fname"=>"Nuno"}]

E eu na Dinamarca.

Resumo: A preservação da privacidade entre várias bases de dados apresenta-se como um dos mais intrigantes desafios na criptografia actual. Várias técnicas têm sido desenvolvidas no sentido de tentar resolver este problema. Este artigo surge então como uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o tema com especial foco na Anonymization, Private Information Retrieval e Secure Multi-Party Computation. Serão também apresentadas algumas directrizes para trabalho futuro, no qual se tentará aplicar os conhecimentos adquiridos a um problema concreto.

Link: report.pdf

Note: I know you will look away as soon as you see f x. Please don’t. You can see some interesting things in this post.

I was on the train with João and I was delighted to see my old friend $. I also miss composite (.) but $ is really the coolest shortcut Haskell gives a developer. So what is $?

It’s defined as:

f ($) x = f x

What does it does?

Prelude> let f x = map (succ) $ filter ( < 5 ) x
Prelude> f [4,5,7]
[5]
Prelude> let f  = zipWith ($)
Prelude> f [succ,id] [5,4]
[6,4]

Ulisses gave me the weird example. The first one was created by myself. In the first one we filter a list for numbers that are inferior to five and then we apply succ function to it. That is, we add one. :P Without $ we would have

Prelude> let f x = map (succ) (filter ( < 5 ) x)
Prelude> f [4,5,7]
[5]

So we got the parenthesis off and that always great to help make the code more readable. At least I simply love this symbol. Ulisses sample is quite more complex. First off all because it is in point-free/point-less notation. zipWith is a function that receives two lists and applies then function provided pair by pair. Like if I want to add [1,2,3] and [3,2,1] I can:

Prelude> zipWith (+) [1,2,3] [3,2,1]
[4,4,4]

Ain’t it cool? So in this function we simply apply function that goes in the first list (id and succ) to the numbers in the second. Looks easy like this doesn’t it? ;) If it doesn’t just to read it and digest it and you’ll figure it out easily.

Let code the same samples in Ruby. Unfortunately zipWith (should I commit it? :P) doesn’t exist in ruby I’ll have to work with another sample using plain zip (it’s the same as zipWith (\a b -> [a]++[b])).

irb(main):001:0> [1,2,3].zip([3,2,1])
=> [[1, 3], [2, 2], [3, 1]]

Well ruby handles this pretty well without $. We just need to do:

irb(main):002:0> [1,2,3].zip [3,2,1]

Because it’s object oriented this kind of issues don’t exist in Ruby. There are no expressions with large number of parenthesis as well. despite this I must agree that the Haskell version is far more readable than the ruby one:

irb(main):003:0> [4,5,7].select {
  |i| i < 5
}.map { |i| i.succ }
=> [5]

But I still miss $.I miss coding in Haskell. It’s just plain fun.

I hope that I have helped you see why languages like Haskell and Scheme do matter, and others like Python and Ruby can be both useful and fun to work with!

http://nao.quero.imposto.ms/

dscape@dscape:~$ history | awk '{print $2}' \
| sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
86 sudo
45 cd
27 ll
23 ./script/server
21 rm
17 ls
12 vim
7 startx
5 glxinfo
4 su

Worst movie ever.

A frase é do Lars Gustafsson, no meu livro favorito “A morte de um Apicultor”. Que com um pouco de sorte o João Moura anda a ler.

Há coisas que nunca são demais mostrar. Mesmo que antigas. Sobre o programa novas oportunidades:

• 240 mil licenças de Microsoft Windows Vista Home BasicN Português DVD, 256,57€, resultam em mais de 61 milhões de Euros (61.576.800€)
• 240 mil licenças de Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Português OEM, 128,51€, resultam em mais de 30 milhões de Euros (30.842.400€)

Mesmo que existisse a oferta do software, seria um presente envenenado cobrado várias vezes à economia portuguesa no futuro a médio e longo prazo.

Em http://blog.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/2007/06/05/que-casamento-e-este/

Agora as mesmas contas usando uma qualquer distribuição Linux e Open-Office:

240 mil vezes zero = zero euros (linux)

240 mil vezes zero = zero euros (open-office)

total: zero euros

poupança possível do estado: 91 milhões de euros (dos vossos bolsos)

Eu até falei de como os portugueses são tão lorpas que são roubados quando compram estes computadores e nem sequer notam. Mas esqueci-me destes pormenores fantásticos, ainda são mais roubados nos impostos que pagam por causa de promaiores como este. Peço desculpa, é que usar qualquer palavra com menor quando estam envolvidos 91 milhões parece mal.

É de referir que a Microsoft - segundo consta - fez um descontinho. Obrigado Microsoft! ;) Sempre tão simpáticos. Portanto sim provavelmente as verbas são inflacionadas, mas isso é da responsabilidade do autor do artigo e não minha. Eu só fiz as contas - com alguma dificuldade admito - do linux!

[EDIT: Vi neste post o teste de literacia digital das novas oportunidades. Peço que o façam e constatem que são todos uns iliterados porque aposto que poucos vão conseguir acabar a avaliação. E vejam lá que alguns de vocês - como eu! - são engenheiros informáticos. Que vergonha! :(]

qs = Question.find_by_sql
"select X.* from ots_schema.questions," +
  "XMLTABLE (\'$d/question\' passing document as \"d\" " +
    "COLUMNS question_text VARCHAR(200)" +
    "PATH \'question_text\') as X"

qs.first.question_text.lstrip
=> "Which of the following is the correct syntax to set the DB2COMM variable to TCPIP?\n  "

If DB2 was had a good DB2 driver and a ActivePureXML (or something adapter) it would so f*ckin rock. Just look at the sample. And the dynamic nature of ruby would enable the flexibility of xml documents.

Please IBM please. DB2 for mac and decent support on Ruby. Don’t make me write things like this no more:

# Once again fixing IBM_DB bugs the ugly way
# with_scope anyone?
add_index :'ots_schema.users', :login

or

t.column :document, :xml

About porting Ruby on Rails to Javascript:

In an effort to increase developer productivity at Google, Steve tried to convince the company to adopt Rails (and consequently Ruby) as a programming language. When that fell on deaf ears (Google really does not want to increase the number of languages that must be supported by their infrastructure), Steve decided to do what any other frustrated programmer would do: he ported Rails to JavaScript. Line by line. In 6 months. Working 2000 hours. Steve is a coding stud.

From: Steve Yegge ported Rails to JavaScript

In this six months Steve could have contributed to the rails core and improved the framework to a great extent. If he found security issues like the article refers than he should have fixed them in rails. I cannot even begin to understand why he didn’t by the way. Or at least reported them.

My conclusion of seeing that google allowed a employee to waste 6 months of work because they don’t want to increase the number of languages that must be supported by their infrastructure is that Google is Dumb.

Steve seems like a smart guy so if I was told to rewrite Ruby on Rails by an employer I cannot understand why he didn’t - at the very least - refused to do so and pointed out how stupid it was to reinvent the wheel. I simply hate javascript and love ruby. I think javascript is the worst thing there is in the internet. That’s one of the reasons I decided to take a chance on XForms. Well but that’s a personal opinion and has nothing to do with the case!
The question is:

So will this bring something new to the web?

Yes! But it’s not that this wheel is great and the other was flat. It can bring something but just because Google has the power to do that, in any language they decide to use. They have the man power to go beyond what rails offer.

But does this make the decision less dumb?

No. They could do it in rails and improve a great open source product.
Or is it that hard for engineers at google to learn a new language??

Finally we will be able to refactor our ugly code when we have this situation (changeset 9067):

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :channels
end

class Channel < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :network
  belongs_to :user
end

class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :channels
  has_one :network,
    :through => :channels,
    :conditions => ['channels.alive? = ?', true]
end

Another good news is that the RubyForge place for the OTS project was finally approved. So guess I will be doing some work on it this afternoon.

• Serving Images From A Database - MySQL-dump
  (tags: mysql database images performance web server architecture lighttpd)
• [Rails] Calling view helpers from your controller - Lars Pind
  module ActionView module Helpers module TextHelper module_function :pluralize, :truncate end end end
  (tags: rails helpers controller rubyonrails development views)
• UI-patterns.com
  (tags: ui patterns design usability webdesign interface reference web)
• Instant video; Custom video solutions for your web site, social network & more: Home: Fliqz - we power video
  (tags: video web2.0 sharing hosting community videos social multimedia)

• Google Code University - Google Code
  (tags: google education tutorial ajax tutorials development code python java c++)

• Understanding Ruby blocks, Procs and methods
  A very good post on ruby. If you haven’t tried Ruby yet just install it and test this.
  If you don’t love it by the end of the article… Your mad :X
  (tags: ruby blocks tutorial functional proc development closures yield lambda)
• Things - task management on the Mac
  (tags: gtd mac software productivity osx todo inspiration web2.0)
• Getting things done - Celso Martinho
  (tags: GTD celso todo xml igtd)

If your working with DB2 on Rails you probably need to check if the xml document is - at least - well formed.

I found a neat plugin called validates-xml that uses REXML to see if documents are well formed.

To install it simply

svn co http://validates-xml.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ validates-xml-read-only

And copy that folder to vendor/plugins.

You can easily integrate schema validation with a validates_xml_with_schema method. But you should use REXML as it cames with the standard ruby bundle since version 1.8.

To use it simply restart your server and

validates_xml :xmldocument

That’s it!

• Ruby on Rails Security Project — Exploring the Security of Rails and friends.
  (tags: rails security rubyonrails ruby blog programming development mysql)

• QuarkRuby: Consume non rails-style REST API’s
  (tags: ruby rails rubyonrails rest api activeresource non-rails-style development webdevelopment)
• eigenclass - Warm fuzzy things for random simulations
  (tags: ruby development random pseudorandom test analysis probability)
• QuarkRuby: Ruby on Rails Security Guide
  (tags: article authentication security rails rubyonrails ruby reference development)

Como já disse anteriormente ando a trabalhar no CouchDB-Ruby driver. Como a coisa tem o seu nível de exigência decidi usar rspec, algo que já andava para fazer a algum tempo, de forma a melhorar a testagem do software que produzo e reduzir o tempo de implementação. Já agora aproveito para sugerir o ZenTest a quem quiser que o rspec corra em background.

Continuando: rspec é uma forma descritiva - tipo cenários em Use Case - para descrever os nossos testes. Em Ruby claro, dai o R :P

O resultado final fica assim. É catita e prático, já que evita mais uma ida a consola para escrever ’spec filename.rb’! E é bastante parecida com a linguagem natural. Por exemplo - um dos meus primeiros testes é:

it "should connect to server and return a Server object" do
  CouchDB.connect(HOST, PORT).should
    be_kind_of(CouchDB::Server)
end

Não fiz commit de nada porque a implementaçao anterior do CouchDB-Ruby com JSON não está completa. Portanto não vale a pena ir espreitar que não está nada lá! Em breve, espero eu, podem ver os testes completos online.

De qualquer forma se estiverem interessados em experimentar o rspec basta:

• Instalar o rspec
  sudo gem install rspec
• Descobrir o path onde está o ruby e o rspec. Estes comandos são capazes de ajudar:
  which ruby
  gem environment
• Com os meus paths basta correr:

  
  export TM_RUBY=/usr/bin/ruby
  export TM_RSPEC_HOME=/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.1.3
  cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles/
  svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rspec/trunk/RSpec.tmbundle
  

• Como o (meu) terminal não gosta de exports. Caso não funcione façam:

  echo TM_RUBY=/usr/bin/ruby >> ~/.profile
  echo TM_RSPEC_HOME=/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rspec-1.1.3 >> ~/.profile
  

• Actualizar os Bundles do TextMate
  Bundles > Bundle Editor > Reload Bundles

E pronto! Caso surjam dúvidas podem sempre consultar a documentação oficial do bundle rspec para TextMate. Que comece a diversão! Bem vá diversão é exagerar mas com rspec é pelo menos uma experiência mais agradável que o habitual quando se fala de testes.

• CouchDb-Ruby @ Rubyforge
  (tags: ruby database couchdb distributed document rubyforge json dscape star nunojob petelyons jasonyates)
• Vawkr - Look Who’s Talking!
  (tags: apps collaboration web2.0 webcam flash community)

Bem todos os semestres faço um plano de acção do que vou fazer para além de o que é espectável de mim - ir as aulas, fazer os trabalhos, passar nos exames e ler pelo menos um livro de informática - de escolha livre - por mês.

Acredito na valorização pessoal e gosto muito de aprender coisas novas. E acredito que não existe melhor forma de o fazer que com projectos práticos!

Algumas das novidades do último semestre foram ter entrado no centro de apoio ao open-source do departamento de informática, ser eleito IBM DB2 Student Ambassador e ter entrado na melhor rede de bloggers de informática de portugal - prt.sc. Como projecto pessoal escolhi aprender - por sugestão do Ulisses Costa - Ruby & Ruby on Rails.

Dito isto resta uma dúvida: O que aprender este semestre?

Tenho que confessar que ando nas nuvens por terem aceite a minha colaboração no projecto CouchDB do rubyforge.

Como devem saber CouchDB é uma base de dados criada pelo Damien Katz (que trabalha agora na IBM), não relacional, desenvolvida em erlang que tem como objectivo guardar documentos e é RESTful. Os conceitos são excelentes e a forma de abordar o fault-tolerance e problemas de carga são daqueles conceitos que nos deixam a babar mortinhos por experimentar o brinquedo novo. Mas não se fica por aqui. Aconselho a lerem a wiki para terem uma noção do que é - e o que não é - o CouchDB. Só não gosto muito do facto de estar tão ligado a javascript e JSON - o primeiro porque nunca gostei muito de javascript e o segundo porque preferia yaml. Mas vá antes JSON que XML!

Outros tópicos que andam por aqui a passear - sendo que aqui é a minha cabeça - é a vontade de aprender um mínimo de Erlang e continuar o estudo de DB2 para tirar a certificação. Espero que quando acabar este semestre possa olhar para trás e sentir a mesma satisfação que sinto pelo semestre que já passou.

• CouchDb Project Website
  (tags: database couchdb json erlang javascript distributed opensource)
• Main Page - CouchDb
  (tags: database couchdb json erlang rest distributed storage document)

E ando eu a pagar propinas para isto. Mais um site feito em asp mais um belo not-so-blue-screen.

in: www.saum.uminho.pt

Eu sei, eu sei. Acontece em qualquer linguagem/framework. Mas a mim - como gajo de peculiar azar - acontece-me sempre com aspx à mistura.

• State of the Computer Book Market, Part 4 - The Languages - O’Reilly Radar
  Java, Ruby, Perl, Python, Erlang ?
  (tags: languages, market, computer, it, informatics, oreilly)

• New - Pastie
  (tags: code paste tools ruby snippets rails web)
• Addressing fragments in REST - O’Reilly XML Blog
  (tags: rest web xml rails article ruby development webdev)
• Vitamin Features » Creating Sexy Stylesheets
  (tags: css webdesign tips design web webdevelopment webdev development)
• Rails, REST, and anarchist XML - O’Reilly XML Blog
  (tags: rest xml rails programming rubyonrails development)
• Mike Clark’s Weblog
  (tags: rails ruby rubyonrails integration console howto development)
• Otaku, Cedric’s weblog: Why Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream
  (tags: ruby rails rubyonrails development article blog)

• Ruby QuickRef
  (tags: ruby reference cheatsheet quickref documentation development rubyonrails programming)

Gosto especialmente do pormenor do SSL :P

Fonte: Inutilities

Most rails developers use OS-X. Mostly because rails is built-in the latest release (Leopard) and TextMate offers a great IDE to use with Rails. Some could argue that it also works nicely on Windows but I really believe that Rails ain’t done to be used on a Windows Platform. Many articles and interviews with rails creator DHH second this statement. Rails is easy to develop in OS X and deploy in a Linux distro of your choice.

In my most recent screen-cast I explored an interesting technique of taking advantage of rails RESTful design and DB2 pureXML features to easily create a web-service that could query a relational databases with XML support (like DB2). As you must know DB2 Express-C is distributed freely and offers no limitation to home users/small companies. So it would be awesome to expand ActiveRecord to support xml elements, if a schema was provided to the database.

I’m aware that a pure xml database stategy would be a bad approach but there are situations when it simply makes sense. And in those situations one would profit greatly of two things wich are missing.

• XML Support for ActiveRecord - in construction?
• DB2 for Mac - will this ever exist?

Antonio Cangiano is creating a plugin that revolves around this concepts, but in a DB2 centered perspective. In my opinion it would be best if the rails plugin worked not only for DB2 but for any database adapter with XML support - as long as such is provided.

Let me give you a sample. Imagine that you have a database model for translating you rails application. It could be something like:

Languages

• ID, int
• DOCUMENT, XML

Imagine that the xml file is

<language isoname="pt-PT">
  <hello>Olá</hello>
  <bye>Até a próxima!</bye>
</language>
(...)

If this makes sense in your application then you could easily do something like register your model to observe (see observer design pattern) the session['language'] for changes and, if it’s changed, it would get all the XML for that language - it would fall back to default if such was not available - and create the hash with the values. The problem with this approach - besides making no sense for the internationalization problem! - is that in the observer model you would have to:

Language.find :first

And fetch the whole xml and then process it. If the XML document has 10MB, it would take some time. With XQuery support on ActiveRecord we could simply

Language.find :first,
  :xcondition => ["//language[@isoname==?]",
    session['language']]

Or, if we simply wanted to say hello in many languages - like flickr in their first page - we could simply

Language.find :first, :xcondition => '//hello'

There are just two problems that prevent rails developers from being able to do this kind of things. And those are the lack of XQuery abilities in ActiveRecord and the fact that Mac developers cannot use DB2.

I was selected for all paid trip Struer (Denmark) representing University of Minho - Portugal in the Summer School CDDIP 2008 Erasmus IP program. As far as I know at least five lucky Portuguese students will attend.

But what is CDDIP? CDDIP stands for Conceptual Design and Development of Innovative Products and the goal is to facilitate better interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration for BSc and MSc students with different technical backgrounds.

If you are from another country and you are also going you can leave me a comment. See you there!

• Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps: position static relative absolute float
  umn layout using relative and absolute positioning!
  (tags: css positioning tutorial webdesign layout design howto web development)
• Selectors
  :after
  (tags: css reference selectors w3c webdesign web html design)
• Clearing a float container without source markup
  his float no longer protrudes out of the containing box, with no extra clearing element used in the container!
  (tags: css float webdesign clear html design web webdev)
• CSS: Caixas com cantos arredondados e sombras
  (tags: css webdesign html design w3c tips development)

So guess what. Someone else is thinking like me and did a work that relates in someway to my previous screen-cast. I really wonder what they thinks about it. Here’s the very nice presentation:

found @ planetxforms

HIGH QUALITY VERSION DOWNLOAD HERE

Well, here is the long promised screen-cast. The amount of topics covered is simply huge. To get you ready for the screen-cast I prepared some other more introductory screen-cast as well as some articles on these subjects. I’m sorry that I don’t have the time to document the REST, but I really advice to invest some time learning it as it’s a very pragmatic way of delivering high quality web services.

I strongly advice you to download this screen-cast from rapidshare as both Youtube and Google Videos quality is really awful. You can download it from here.

This work was really fun to do. So I hope to have the opportunity to develop it further and manage nested rest routes like /mets/1/agents to return the agents of the first submission information package (sip) using some cool DB2 pureXML features. I really feel that with a good plugin to help users take full advantage of DB2 pureXML features and a little of imagination this web-service could be of some use.

I also expect to complete the xforms model as it is not indexing a fileptr to each category when such is selected. I hope to implement this soon enough.

Here are the associated resources I developed:

• [screencast@rapidshare] METS Standard with IBM DB2 Express C using XForms as user-interface and Ruby on Rails as a Rest Web-services

• [code] XForms
• [code] Ruby on Rails Rest Web-Service

And here are the other two screencasts I produced to introduce you to XForms and METS:

• [screen-cast] An easy introduction to METS/XForms (The first part of the screen-cast)
• [source] An easy introduction to METS/XForms
• [accessibility/screen-cast script] An easy introduction to METS/XForms

• [article] Installing IBM Emerging Technologies ToolKit (ETTK) on Eclipse
• [screen-cast] Create a XForms user interface from a schema using Visual XForms Designer
• [article] Some good XForms Resources
• [article] First version of the XForms without METS
• [code] First version of the XForms without METS
  

I also advice you to take a look at this articles. All of them where very helpful to my work.

• Ubuntu work-arround for DB2 Express-C
• Starting with DB2 Express-C
• Solving problem “The database manager shared memory set cannot be allocated”
• Creating database objects & Storing validated XML data

• Ruby and DB2 Guide
• Ruby/Python and DB2 Drivers
• Getting started with DB2 and Ruby on Rails
• IBM_DB Forum

• METS: An overview and Tutorial
• METS Schema Structure Diagram

• RubyForge: Rails Adapter/Driver for IBM Databases: help
  Using IBM_DB driver with Rails2.0 problems
  (tags: ibm db2 rubyonrails rails ruby development ibm_db adapter)

• DB2 and Ruby on Rails, Part 1: Getting started with DB2 and Ruby on Rails
  (tags: database db2 developerworks rails ruby rubyonrails ibm)
• MacOSaiX - Mosaics for Mac OS X
  (tags: application applications apps creativity design download editor art osx mac photography mosaic)
• Zen and the Art of Ruby Programming
  (tags: cangiano python blogs rubyonrails rails programming blog ruby db2 ibm)
• Rails 2.0: XML data type and DB2 : leonardoborges.com
  (tags: rails db2 fix xml purexml