IBM DB2 Express-C em versão mac

DB2 for Mac

É oficial. A versão GRÁTIS do DB2 está disponivel para download para mac.

Acabaram-se as desculpas do não quero outra maquina virtual para correr isso, nem sequer experimento.

Eu sei que sou suspeito para falar já que faço parte da equipa DB2. A análise que vou aqui fazer é muito influenciada pelo meu dia a dia no trabalho mas o que escrevo aqui é a minha opinião pessoal .

A IBM não trabalha no DB2 para pessoas como nós que têm uns sites jeitosos com alguns milhares de hits diários (com sorte). Eles fazem isto para aguentar soluções de escala gigante, algumas com standards pesados em  XML de agências governamentais, financeiras, health-care, etc, que transaccionam quantidades enormes de informação diáriamente. Essas empresas não só tem que minar os dados como fazer queries sobre eles de uma forma bastante intensiva. Estou a falar das maiores empresas americanas, e não o digo decor. Ouvi-o da boca de DBAs da Merrill Lynch, Barclays, ONU, Morgan Stanley, etc.. Que tem eles em comum? Todos eles usam DB2 e estão interessados em usar as funcionalidades XML do produto.

Já agora ninguém confia que seja possivel ter performance em XML certo? Bem a IBM tem pessoas inteligentes (como eu, lol) a trabalhar em tornar isso possivel. Deixo este link para vos aguçar o apetite. Claro que a performance não será a mesma que SQL mas comparado com os parsers xml que andam a usar… eheh. Exprimentem. :P

Como já descrevi o cliente normal do DB2 é facil constactar que não é feito para vender a José, ao Joaquim. Nem sequer a pequena empresa da Josefina. A versão Express-C é gratís para todos por isso mesmo. As limitações são um máximo de 16Gb de ram e 4 processadores na maquina.

Se isto parece razoavel:

DB2 for Mac Download

Depois contem como correu e se precisarem de umas dicas podem sempre entrar em contacto.

Footnote: Para os interessados se estão a desenvolver algo com um standard xml estranho  a probabilidade desse standard ser suportado pela ibm é grande e pode ser consultado aqui.

Sobre o Windows 7

Como é obvio vou falar mal. Alias diariamente uso windows e é provavelmente a coisa mais infeliz do meu dia a dia.

Anyway acabei de ver um vídeo a mostrar os corners (no windows 7 são top down left e right em vez de actual corners como nos macs) e multi-touch. O senhor que estava a apresentar é descarado o suficiente para dizer que isto é algo que o iPhone tem mas os macs não.

AMIGO: Os corners já existem nem sei a quantos milhões de anos. Quanto ao multitouch já vão alguns meses.. Pelo menos. Mentir para que? Vão sempre copiar a mac. Vão sempre usar o raio do DOS que toda a gente sabe que é foleiro. Se querem inovar. Inovem. Se vão copiar admitam. SIMPLES NÃO?! Já agora, para além de admitir paguem… Eu nem gosto muito de IP mas se a apple fez e vocês copiaram então paguem. Ponto!

Conselho de amigo. Querem fazer algo de jeito deitem lá fora isso que chamam Windows e começem do zero. Com esse código nunca na vida vão lá.

Posts Relacionados Sugeridos de Uma Forma Descarada na Secção dos Comentários :P

• http://freelancesamurai.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/fingerworks/

Java 6 for Mac OS X Leopard is here!!

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.

Rails::ActiveRecord XQuery && DB2::Mac

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.

Skitch Invites (Mac OS X only)

I have been receiving some emails asking me how do I create these images. Well I use Skitch, which is one of my favorite Mac OS X apps (along with Books, Textmate and iSync). Unfortunately it’s still invite only.

Anyway if your interested in giving Skitch a try just leave a comment in this post, and I’ll send it to the email you provided as soon as possible.

Howto: Change folder icon in Leopard

Copy the icon you want to use (PNG), browse to the folder you want to change the icon.

Now select it and press command + I. Now select the folder and press command + V to paste the icon.

Imagem do dia

Atenção: Esta ilustração mostra como limpar as preferências do TextMate. É apenas um devaneio geek, que mostra como se pode complicar até a mais simples das coisas. A próxima versão será em base-64, para piorar ainda mais o cenário. Contudo quero deixar claro que o uso ilícito de software proprietário é crime. Se através deste exemplo descobrirem como se faz e o fizerem estão a vossa própria responsabilidade.

Optimus em Ups! I did it again

Descobri hoje que a Optimus é só para Microsoft Internet Explorer e Microsoft Windows.

Penso que em breve a Microsoft irá anunciar a aquisição da Optimus passando esta a chamar-se Microsoft Optimus. Uma excelente oportunidade para mudar de fornecedor de serviços não concordam?

O .NET não veio para salvar o mundo, se se dessem ao trabalho de ler um pouco mais, explorar, aprender um bocadinho viam que existem outras soluções. Cada uma mais ou menos indicada para cada função, CLARO!

Para a Optimus parece-me evidente que não é o mais adequado dizer aos clientes: Está a usar OS-X/Linux/Whatever. Solução: Olhe, use Microsoft Windows.

E SE EU NÃO QUISER?

Na volta na próxima estão-me a dizer que tenho que ir a este café ou aquele café porque apenas ai posso fumar. Devem achar que este pais é uma republica das (e dos) bananas. Mas não é Optimus, não é.

Também estou aqui a tecer considerações sobre a empresa que fez isto. Sinto a necessidade de mudar de operadora só é pena que não haja concorrência. Vai tudo dar ao mesmo, o mesmo antro de incompetência e mediocridade que as nossas empresas se orgulham de ostentar como bandeira.

Força pessoal, peguem na bandeira e nas medalhas, juntem-se ao Socrates, ao Cavaco, ao Rui Rio, ao Menezes. Mais uns litros de gasolina e aposto que davam uma fogueira impecável.

Screencast app for Mac OS X Leopard

I’m looking for the best screencast software (sound recording is a must have) to run on my MacBook.

So far I found the following software:

• Adobe Captivate 3 [Windows Only]
• SnapzProX
  
• BTV
• Camtasia Studio [Windows Only]
• iShowU
• vcn2swf
• Jing Project [integrates with webapp, by the creators of Camtasia]
• Screenography
• Screen Mimic
• Screen Record
• Blip.tv [integrates with webapp]
• Screencast [thanks Rui Moura]
• ViewletBuilder

From what I have read so far it seems iShowU gathers most of the preferences. But when a app is prefixed by an i mac users seem to love it immediately.

Anyone tried any of these products? What are your thoughts on them? Which one would you advice me to use?

[EDIT: Currently I have tested most of these products and I’m using iShowU and KeyCastr]

MacBook OS X Leopard Tips: Controlling the fan speed with Fan Control

I use my computer for something like 6 hours a day so it’s bound to get hot. I didn’t like the apple scheme for the fans that consists basically in making no noise until it’s hot and then make a lot of it.

So I looked for a open-source application to help me control the fan rpm and found Fan Control. I wouldn’t even post this if not for one simple fact: The source is included in the dmg file. Good job guys!

Mac OS X Leopard Tips: iSync plugin for Nokia 5300

First of all my phone sucks. I’m aware.

And when i opened iSync for the first time and saw that it wasn’t supported I was really piss*d off. I wasn’t worried about contacts – even thought it’s nice to know that if I loose my cellphone I’ll still have them – but I really needed the integration with iCal/dashboard.

I googled it and found a lot of hand-crafted solutions that I don’t think are suited the general public. Luckily someone thought of this and made a easy to install plugin to make iSync capable of synchronizing with Nokia 5300. Interested? Let’s go:

Close iSync. Download this and the unzip it to ~/Library/PhonePlugins/.

That’s it. The next time you open it you’ll be able to sync with your (not) favorite phone. Credits go to Erka, the author of this plugin.

Mac OS X Leopard Tips: Change your home directory to a different partition

Here’s something that I thought would give me some headaches. Well guess what I was wrong once again. I’m quite used to this by now so it’s actually fun. I’m sorry to be bothering you with all this Mac OS trash but I like to keep my stuff documented and this is a excellent way of doing so while helping other people.

If you are reading this I assume you want to change your Leopard home directory to somewhere else. So you can start by clicking on the apple on the top left screen and then select System Preferences. Browse to Account and ctrl + click your account to select Advanced Options. There you can change your home directory to wherever you please. Restart and you are ready to go.

Changing your home directory – or any of that other advanced options values – can have some nasty effects on your Leopard. I’m assuming you are an advanced user and familiarized with all the stuff the advanced options window.

If this is not the case and you are considering doing this anyway I’ll leave you with a piece of advice my grandma could have given to me – she actually never did so I have ruined my fair share of computers. And phones. And Playstations. I’ll better stop this list here for my own sake.

Anyway that advice is (should have been): if you don’t know what it is, don’t change it. If you want to change it: learn what it is, how it works, and then you can do what you please. And ruin the computer anyway. But only because you wanted to.

From Ubuntu/Windows to Mac OS-X Leopard

I just got my first brand new MacBook and, as one would expect, some problems emerged by leaving my usual OS combo (Ubuntu/Windows) for Mac OS X Leopard. I’m still undecided whether to install Ubuntu or use VMWare Fusion to use Linux. As for Microsoft Windows as long as I don’t need to use .NET I don’t think I’ll install it. Not even with the free licenses Microsoft provides University of Minho students.

First I had to decide what to install:

• Firefox
• del.icio.us UNSAFE add-on for Firefox
• Portuguese Dictionary add-on for Firefox
• Pidgin Adium
• Nero Toast Titanium
• Office
• Photoshop
• TextMate
• Ruby on Rails
• Java SDK
• Netbeans
• Glassfish
• GHC
• Erlang
• MacTex
• oXygen
• BookPedia
• DB2 (will IBM make it available for mac anytime soon?)

The question you are probably asking is why Firefox instead of Safari!? Because the damn unsafe add-on for del.icio.us is just that: del.icio.us! I just can’t live without it. Maybe if the guys over there worked the basics of security we could say that it’s both excellent and safe! And don’t say there’s a add-on for Safari as well. I’ll only accept it if the add-on is as good as the one provided by Yahoo.

Now we go for the fun part. The problems and solving them. Your attention please, this is only fun for me when I do it on my computer so it won’t be pleasure if you ask me to fix your computer! Joana this one is for you, I know how your mind thinks.. Almost as badly as mine. Oh well, we are related aren’t we? :\ Please release those crazy Christmas photos to the world! :X

I’ll start with a small OS free tip and then go for the Q/A part. If you are Portuguese like myself you just hate all the results that google gives you from .br domains. Most of the results are overrated and most of the times you just wish that they weren’t there. If this is the case just do your normal search in google but write -br in the end. Just test this, go to google and type governo brasileiro -br. It works ;)

1. How do I get my mouse to behave like a normal one by removing this dreadful acceleration?
   

   Easy. Check Rúben’s blog @ http://blog.0x82.com/2007/12/mac-os-and-usb-mouse.html

2. What’s wrong with the encoding on TextEdit? The automatic descovery does not work and even when I specifically tell him to use this encoding it won’t work. The Where is ISO 8859-15 dilemma.

   Still don’t know. Anyone? If you want to test the bug just do this (from here):

   $ echo é > ~/a.txt
   $ cat ~/a.txt
   é
   Open a.txt with TextEdit and get:
   È

   Cracked it! At least I have a partial fix for Migrating documents from Ubuntu to Mac OS X Leopard:

   cmd + space terminal enter

   {go to the directory where the file is}

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 {filename} > UTF8-{filename}

   For me it was:

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 Pam.tex > UTF8-Pam.tex

   And yes PAM is as in Pluggable Authentication Modules. So I have a latex work on that :P

3. Where is type-a-name application? It’s not on the dock.

   Just press cmd + space and type what you are looking for. This is called spotlight. Either this or open Finder and go to applications.

4. Why doesn’t it show my dashboard when I go to the left/whatever corner?

   Have you even configured your mac? Common.. Click the apple on the top left corner and go to System Preferences. Exposé and Spaces. And now that you are there take a look around and configure all the other things that you neglected.

5. This computer is always underlining the words in red. (when the spelling is right :P If not you are a dumbass for asking this!)

   Just press cmd + mouse and change the language. Thanks Nuno Veloso from Apple Tech Team for this tip.

6. How can I see the right mouse button menu?

   crtl + mouseclick

7. PageUp/PageDown!?
   

   fn+ up
   fn + down

If after this you still feel like reading about Mac OS for rookies – like myself – you can check this section in Arun Gupta’s Blog or check this extensive list of Keyboard Shortcuts. Have fun!

Now let’s get back to work, something almost impossible when your doing a report on LaTeX and the encodings are never right.

One final touch: ctrl + alt + cmd + 8. Merry Christmas! :)