Shaking up the establishment

For a long, long time, XML-Spy has been the dominant (and only) XML/XSL/X-Whatever tool we used in Tridion.

Since our product is extremely heavy on XML and XSL, this is an invaluable tool, and all of us use it - despite its rather steep licensing price.

Then, one day, I needed to debug some XSLT that was not transforming correctly using Xalan. It did work perfectly in MSXML and the internal built-in XML-Spy processor.

Cutting a long story short, I ended up downloading and trying <oxygen/>, and simply fell in love with it. So, I asked our internal IT department to get me a licence.

Up to here nothing unusual. Except for the little fact that Oxygen's licences can cost about 25% of XML Spy's. So, IT is now trying to convince the whole of Tridion to use Oxygen instead. I don't really care which way it goes, as long as I get my Oxygen licence...

Getting WebSphere and Tridion to work together

Q: What takes longer when setting up an environment for WebSphere and Tridion interoperability?
A: Downloading and installing Windows 2003 Service Pack 1...

You know something's wrong when...

The replacement car you get has better options than yours (MP3 reader!)

My XP "most used" list

Nothing tells you more about one person than the list of most used applications automagically generated by Windows XP.

I do often reset the whole thing just for the fun of seeing it filling back again. So... here goes my list:

1. Macromedia DreamWeaver MX
2. Eclipse
3. Remote Desktop Connection
4. VMWare Workstation
5. Textpad
6. Notepad
7. Winrar
8. Oxygen XML Editor
   
9. Adobe Reader 7.0
10. Internet Explorer
11. Paint Shop Pro
12. Trillian

It is funny how so many applications are not taken into account (I think it has something to do with the way they're launched - from the Start menu or from some quick-bar shortcut).

Firefox is constantly open and doesn't show up in the list. The same goes for Outlook and iTunes...

Well, never mind. Care to share yours?

WinFS Beta 1 out

So, Microsoft finally delivered Beta 1 of Cairo. If it took them approximately 11 years to deliver the first beta (about 200 years Internet-life time) how long until they release the first final version?

And how long until someone decides it is actually a good idea? As with anything database related, a Database-driven file system will only be as good as its data.

Corporate servers know where the data they need is located. And very seldomly need to do versioning.

Home users never know where a file is, but will be too lazy to fill in enough metadata about any file to make such a system useful. And will still not be able to find their files back.

I might be a bit too pessimistic about it, but I just don't see the need for this anymore. Of course, I'm sure MS' marketing team will make it an absolute hit (TM) and manage to squeeze some more licensing money through it.

Anyway, if you're feeling adventurous, here's the link. (You do need to be a subscribed MSDN user).

I guess you're used to this by now...

Had a "kind of" writer's block around here. 1000 different subjects came and went and never made it to the Publish queue in blogspot.

Never mind, I'm back and with loads of content coming up, mainly on the Tridion news and some other nice and funny stuff.

Keep you posted,

Nuno

Nice place to live in?

Intriguing name in any case... pity about the signs constantly disappearing though...

Back from paradise

This was the view from my hotel room.

Of course, 'round here there's nothing but rain and cold. Damn.

All-in-one

OK, it's been some time since my last post, so here's the latest news from Nunoland...

New Laptop
Got my new laptop last week. It's a Dell Latitude D810 and it just rocks. Some of the specs:

• 128 MB Video RAM
• 2GHz Pentium M
• 1GB RAM
• 60GB 7.200 rpm disc
• 15x4'' screen, 1920x1200 resolution (widescreen)
• Built-in wireless, bluetooth, etc, etc.

And yes, it can run GTA:San Andreas at the same time as 1 VMWare image, WebSphere Studio + WebSphere test environment, Tridion, SQL Server, and synchronize the calendar with my phone without interrupting my game play ;-)

Favorite comments in someone else's code

I've been finding some pretty cool comments around here. Here's a few examples for you:

• //dirty hack, I know, but must have this running today
• <%-- Todo: error handling --%>
• <!-- This must be the most misleading error message I ever wrote -->

Isn't life great?

Interesting discussion: Are design elements part of your application content?

In the never-ending discussion on whether your application design elements belong to the realm of Application servers or content management, we've been having some very interesting discussions within Tridion.

Current conclusion: we will keep on storing design elements (images, style sheets, dynamic pages, etc) in the content manager and deploy them from there.

Let's talk dirty: Tridion Delivery Framework

Got to the "expert level" in TDF now. I can now use the power of tag libraries and cast spells like:

Display all components based on template "componentTemplateID":
<tdf:cp ctid="componentTemplateId"/>

Display page metadata field "Title":
<tdf:pagemeta key="Title"/>

Apply stylesheet to section:
<tdf:style xsl="/path/to/style.xsl" method="xml">
some html here
</tdf:style>

And, last but definitely not least, the great cache & search construct
-- here you have your html form with the search fields mapped to verity --
<tdf:cache id="thisCacheName">
<tdf:search/>
</tdf:cache>

And I'm one day away from my holidays. I might still do a post tomorrow.

Cheers

Sweet, man! Sweeeeet...

my new laptop rocks so much...

I've never had so much screen "real estate" (1900x1200).

When I manage to recover from shock I'll post something meaningful.

Memo to self

- ALWAYS do things yourself, do not delegate
- Do not trust e-mails saying "it's done"
- Do not trust people that are about to leave on holidays

This is the key to successful projects ;-)

Party time

Woo-hoo!! Q2 numbers are in, and we just did our best quarter since Q4 2003 (which had been the best ever).

Loads of new sales, including a very big deal in the US (first major deal there, hope this will spark some new ones) and very steady services revenue.

Party time now, champagne is starting to pop in 15 minutes.

Have a great weekend!