From Peter at PSDT.com Mon Oct 2 09:36:08 2006 From: Peter at PSDT.com (Peter Scott) Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:36:08 -0700 Subject: [VPM] Meeting ideas? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061002093545.025e9f88@mail.webquarry.com> Hi there. Anyone got anything they want to talk about or hear about on the 17th? -- Peter Scott Pacific Systems Design Technologies http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.perlmedic.com/ From darren at DarrenDuncan.net Mon Oct 2 13:28:54 2006 From: darren at DarrenDuncan.net (Darren Duncan) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 13:28:54 -0700 Subject: [VPM] Meeting ideas? In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20061002093545.025e9f88@mail.webquarry.com> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20061002093545.025e9f88@mail.webquarry.com> Message-ID: At 9:36 AM -0700 10/2/06, Peter Scott wrote: >Hi there. Anyone got anything they want to talk about or hear about on >the 17th? Ask me again in a week. I may have an answer for you then. -- Darren Duncan From darren at DarrenDuncan.net Thu Oct 5 19:52:35 2006 From: darren at DarrenDuncan.net (Darren Duncan) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 19:52:35 -0700 Subject: [VPM] Fwd: Perl-Freelancer needed (remote) Message-ID: I don't know if its appropriate to post these here, but I received the following email today from someone wanting to subcontract a Perl programmer for a specific task; I am not available to do it, but in case some of you are looking for work? -- Darren Duncan -------------- From: downes at eurochannel.de Subject: Perl-Freelancer needed Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 12:19:48 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1807 Importance: Normal Reply-To: downes at eurochannel.de To: We are customizing an Auction Software which it is originally from Mewsoft and which it is written in Perl using a MySQL database. We have already introduced some further features and improvements on it but still need some work to be done. Due to other commitments we want to subcontract this job to an experienced and well versed Perl programmer acquainted with this type of projects (PLEASE DO NOT APPLY IF YOU PERSONALLY DO NOT FULFILL THIS REQUIREMNT). You may see the originally software at http://www.mewsoft.com/ and our development at http://www.printeverywhere.com/auction_dev/cgi/auction.cgi After finishing this phase and going online we need to keep the development and maintenance of this system on steady bases and it is our intention to keep working with same partner we choose for this job. 1) Implement a ?My Messages" ("My Folders"), similar a eBay where to administrate the incoming and out going messages from users and administration 2) Extend the existing one level administration to a three tier level with lowered control and access privileges for additional administrators. 3) When submitting and item for selling, to have the possibility to suggest a new category at any path level. The administrators can view and act upon suggested categories. 4) When registering the user should have to possibility to set up the calendar format (dd.mm.yyyy) or (mm.dd.yyyy) and time zone he wants to be displayed at the Site 5) Integrate the existing Advertisers Accounts and Billing System so that we can generate automatically invoices for their campaigns. (paying per Klick or per exposure) 6) Finish the already started "Cross Promotion" chargeable function. When a user sees an item from a seller some other items should be displayed at the end of the items page (eBay similar). 7) Implement Windows / Excel Bulk Lister which enables the user to list items to the system without having to visit the site. 8) PayPal integrated end of auction checkout: Buyers and sellers with a PayPal account can seamlessly conclude the sales of items with the end of auction combined PayPal checkout. 9) Improve the existing internal messaging system with a better outlook and adding some extra information about other ongoing auctions, extending this to items I am watching and current auctions status. 10) Finish the already started shop feature. ( eBay Like) 11) We have introduced some new functions and features to the original current version from Mewsoft, and there are still some bugs which has to be fixed or functions to be Improved, complete or tuned-up. Besides this there are a couple of software updates from Mewsoft which has to be added to the running version. If you are interested in doing the job, please quote us a lump-sum for this package. Regards Walter Downes Online Microsystems Weyerstr. 29-31 50676 Cologne (Germany) Tel: (0049) 0221-924320 Fax: (0049) 0221-924322 From darren at DarrenDuncan.net Sun Oct 8 21:10:08 2006 From: darren at DarrenDuncan.net (Darren Duncan) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 21:10:08 -0700 Subject: [VPM] RFC: 2-part Nov tutorial on how to make an RDBMS from scratch Message-ID: I may have hinted at this before, but now to be slightly more formal ... I propose to give a 2-part tutorial in November of 2006, targeted at a general purpose programmer, on how to make an RDBMS "from scratch". Even if you don't intend to make the next Postgres or SQLite or whatever, knowing how an RDBMS works can help you do some kinds of data manipulation within your own programs that you may have pushed off to a SQL database before, for unnecessary complexity, or this knowledge can help you to use an existing RDBMS more effectively if you better understand what your queries mean. Part 1 of the tutorial would cover fundamental RDBMS design principles in a programming language agnostic fashion, and I anticipate it would best be given at the Nov 7th RECCOMPSCI meeting (probably better than an Oct 31st VOSSOC). This part would start by outlining what a relational database management system is (a usually-persistent collection of "relation"-typed variables plus operators to work with them), and show an example library/module API plus query language design and algorithms for effectively and easily implementing such. Note that the vast bulk of conventional SQL DBMS systems is concerned with issues that are orthogonal to the fundamentals of an RDBMS itself, such as handling many users with concurrent updates in a quickly performing fashion for huge amounts of data, or supporting a hundred different legacy ways to do the same thing, or in trying to deal with the vaguarities of SQL. By contrast, you can make a basic easy to use single-concurrent-user system of your own that has all the important features of an RDBMS, and handles smaller amounts of data, and has correct semantics, without spending more than a few days or weeks of effort. This system would natively handle arbitrarily complex data types, and in a large sense has no OO/RDBMS impedence mismatch. Fundamentally, you can do this with any turing complete programming language, though some will lend themselves to the task of doing this quickly and easily more than others. Language features that will help you include built-in support for collection types, particularly associative arrays and sets, N-depth multi-dimensional data structures, dynamically definable data types, closures / anonymous subroutines, the ability to evaluate/compile a character string as code at run time, nested software transactional memory, etc. Part 2 of the tutorial would walk through an actual working implementation of those principles that I would have made (and that would be active in a production system) by then (it is currently in progress), showing how it works; the implementation would be around 100-300KB of Perl 5 code, with next to no dependencies, and be released on CPAN under the name QDRDBMS (Quick and Dirty Relational Database Management System), and I anticipate it would best be given at the Nov 21st Victoria.pm meeting. Regardless of the actual date this is done, the design part should be done before the example implementation part (unlike how the recent RDF 2-parter happened) so that everything flows better. For either part, I can compact or expand my talk to whatever time is available, so the meetings can still be split with other speakers like some past meetings, though I could probably fill the time as well. Note that I most likely won't have a slide presentation made up; the live tutorial will be based on talking and writing diagrams on the white/blackboard. That said, if this talk proves to be helpful to people, I will probably evolve it (part 1, mainly) into a more formal 45-minute talk with slides, and propose it for conferences like the 2007 OSCON or YAPC NA or whatever (possibly with a working Perl 6 implementation by then), and I can practice the more shaken-out versions in mid-2007 for you first, as well. Any feedback on this proposal is appreciated. Thank you. -- Darren Duncan P.S. I now have no proposals for the October Victoria.pm meeting. From Peter at PSDT.com Mon Oct 9 13:45:54 2006 From: Peter at PSDT.com (Peter Scott) Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 13:45:54 -0700 Subject: [VPM] RFC: 2-part Nov tutorial on how to make an RDBMS from scratch In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061009134507.02779288@mail.webquarry.com> At 09:10 PM 10/8/2006, Darren Duncan wrote: >Note that I most likely won't have a slide presentation made up; the >live tutorial will be based on talking and writing diagrams on the >white/blackboard. I strongly suggest that you have some slides ready before your first presentation. Ad hoc presentations rarely work as well as one would like. -- Peter Scott Pacific Systems Design Technologies http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.perlmedic.com/ From darren at DarrenDuncan.net Mon Oct 9 14:23:31 2006 From: darren at DarrenDuncan.net (Darren Duncan) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 14:23:31 -0700 Subject: [VPM] RFC: 2-part Nov tutorial on how to make an RDBMS from scratch In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20061009134507.02779288@mail.webquarry.com> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20061009134507.02779288@mail.webquarry.com> Message-ID: At 1:45 PM -0700 10/9/06, Peter Scott wrote: >At 09:10 PM 10/8/2006, Darren Duncan wrote: >>Note that I most likely won't have a slide presentation made up; the >>live tutorial will be based on talking and writing diagrams on the >>white/blackboard. > >I strongly suggest that you have some slides ready before your first >presentation. Ad hoc presentations rarely work as well as one would >like. Okay, I'll see what I can do about this. If nothing else, I'll see if I can prepare some printed cue cards for myself so that things move more smoothly. But I do need to learn how to make actual slides at some point (no experience there yet); also, I would need someone else's laptop then as I lack my own. To help me learn, I'll try looking at some existing presentations of yours and substitute my own content into copies of such. -- Darren Duncan From Peter at PSDT.com Wed Oct 11 09:28:58 2006 From: Peter at PSDT.com (Peter Scott) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:28:58 -0700 Subject: [VPM] October meeting cancelled Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061011092618.027ab890@mail.webquarry.com> We're too close to the October meeting to come up with and promote a topic, so I'm cancelling. I believe someone had a suggestion for a topic at the last meeting but I can't find my note on it, if the suggester is reading this please let me know what it was. I think it's time for a little less bleeding edge topic. Anyone who wants a presentation on anything in Perl they want to understand better, no matter how elementary, let us know. The group is for all levels of Perl person. -- Peter Scott Pacific Systems Design Technologies http://www.perldebugged.com/ http://www.perlmedic.com/ From darren at DarrenDuncan.net Sat Oct 21 03:01:35 2006 From: darren at DarrenDuncan.net (Darren Duncan) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 03:01:35 -0700 Subject: [VPM] online notes/slides for my database talk Message-ID: Regarding the database talk that I proposed 2 weeks ago to give in November to RCSS and VPM, I have today started preparing actual slides and notes, so that the presentation is not ad-hoc and should be better quality. To get a preview of what the talk may be like, you can see those notes as they progress to be developed, online at: http://svn.openfoundry.org/pugs/docs/talks/rdbms_tutorial_draft.txt (I've committed it to the Pugs distro since I believe the material can be relevant to including some RDBMS-like functionality into Perl 6 itself.) A few pages of notes are there already, and they cover matters of the science underlying relational databases, and definitions of the core RDBMS data types. These notes are primarily relevant to the RCSS talk, since the VPM talk is mainly to walk through my implementation. Over the next couple of weeks, significantly more content will be added, and things will be split or summarized, so to evolve into something orderly and presentable. Peter van Hardenberg, regarding your announcement or poster for RCSS, hopefully what is posted so far will give you something to work with as to a description. If you can't derive material for your announcement or poster from that, then let me know. Of course, I will continue to evolve it over the coming days. -- Darren Duncan P.S. If the material moves to a different url, I will announce it at the time.