Friday, September 18, 2009
Oracle Unveils Database Machine Made With Sun Micro (ORCL,JAVA,HP)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Novell Brings .NET Development to the iPhone
Novell has announced the commercial release of MonoTouch 1.0, a solution for developing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch using the Microsoft .NET framework, including C# and other .NET programming languages.
Novell has announced the commercial release of MonoTouch 1.0, a solution for developing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch using the Microsoft .NET framework, including C# and other .NET programming languages.
Novell officials touted the new technology as a liberating concept for iPhone application developers, because developers have primarily built iPhone applications using C and Objective-C, putting iPhone development beyond the reach of most .NET developers. With MonoTouch, the creativity of millions of .NET developers worldwide can be unleashed to build a vast array of iPhone applications, Novell said.
In an interview with eWEEK, Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platform at Novell and founder of the Mono open-source project, said, “We want to do what Eclipse did for the Java community, but for the .NET community.”
MonoTouch was developed by the Mono Project team and it simplifies iPhone development by allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for the .NET development framework and programming languages such as C#, IronRuby and IronPython. Individual .NET developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) can now sell their products into a massive new market, while corporate developers and IT organizations can deploy their applications in a new mobile computing environment.
The iPhone developer program license restricts developers from distributing scripting engines or Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers, which are required by managed runtimes such as .NET for code execution. As a result, the world of iPhone applications had been previously closed to .NET and Mono developers. Developers can now use MonoTouch while fully complying with these license terms because MonoTouch delivers only native code.
“Developing our mobile forms solution on multiple platforms before MonoTouch from Novell was time-consuming due to the diverse technology platforms,” said Simon Guindon, mobile solution developer at TrueContext. “With MonoTouch, we can now optimize development for the future and enrich the Pronto Forms product offering at a faster pace.”
Indeed, de Icaza said when the Mono team “took a bunch of Apple [Objective-C-based] samples and rewrote them in C#, they were one-half to one-third the size they were before — meaning you use less code
The popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch has created a huge market for iPhone applications. According to Scott Ellison, vice president of Mobile and Wireless at IDC, in its first year the Apple Apps Store had more than 50,000 available applications, and well over 1 billion downloads with an average of more than 140 new applications launched every day.
“The iPhone has experienced tremendous adoption in both consumer and business markets,” said Al Hilda, program director, Application Development Software at IDC, in a statement. “Given that applications are a key reason for the iPhone’s success, a solution that allows .NET developers to use existing skills to build iPhone applications is an exciting and consequential milestone in the evolution of mobile platforms.”
The Mono team initially started working on the MonoTouch technology in 2008 when the team began working Unity Technologies, a game maker that was working on building Mono-based games for the iPhone, de Icaza said.
In a blog post, Tom Higgins, a product evangelist for Unity, said, “Unity has helped bring the Mono framework on to both the iPhone and the Wii console.”
MonoTouch from Novell is a software development kit that contains a suite of compilers, libraries and tools for integrating with Apple’s iPhone SDK. Microsoft .NET base class libraries are included, along with managed libraries for taking advantage of native iPhone APIs, Novell said. Also included is a cross-compiler that can be used for turning .NET executable files and libraries directly into native applications for distribution on the Apple Apps Store or for deployment to enterprise iPhone users. In addition, Xcode integration enables application developers to test on the device or in Apple’s iPhone Simulator and ship applications to the Apple Apps Store for distribution.
In a blog post, de Icaza said MonoTouch consists of:
· MonoTouch.dll — The C# binding to the iPhone native APIs (the foundation classes, Quartz, CoreAnimation, CoreLocation, MapKit, Addressbook, AudioToolbox, AVFoundation, StoreKit and OpenGL/OpenAL).
· Command Line SDK to compile C# code and other CIL language code to run on the iPhone simulator or an iPhone/iPod Touch device.
· Commercial license of Mono’s runtime (to allow static linking of Mono’s runtime engine with your code).
· MonoDevelop Add-in that streamlines the iPhone development and integrates with Interface Builder to create GUI applications.
“The vast majority of Windows-centric developers, ISVs [independent software vendors] and IT organizations have chosen the C# language and .NET for development,” de Icaza said. “As such we have seen tremendous demand for tools to build .NET-based iPhone applications. We developed MonoTouch in response to this demand, giving both individual developers and businesses a solution that breaks down the barriers to iPhone application development.”
Moreover, de Icaza said MonoTouch “is probably the most sought after piece of technology in the history of the [Mono] project. Since October we have been bombarded with requests for it.”
Yet, although Mono is an open source project, MonoTouch is a commercial venture from Novell. MonoTouch Personal and Enterprise Editions are available now through http://shop.novell.com. For individuals only building applications for the Apple Apps Store, MonoTouch Personal Edition is available for $399 per developer for a one-year subscription. MonoTouch Enterprise Edition is available for $999 per developer for a one-year subscription, which includes maintenance and updates. A five-developer Enterprise license supports five concurrent developers and is available for $3,999 per year.
Infection Guide Using Java VbScript
8 roadblocks software developers face
Over recent years, major software developers have started offering their applications in the cloud. In the cloud model, instead of selling their software, they’re simply charging customers based on usage, turning themselves, to some degree, into utilities. The promise to customers is easy scalability and low infrastructure cost. The promise to the software companies is both a chance to upgrade their offering at any time and to make those upgrades immediately available.
This pay-as-you-go model also allows enterprise developers to reduce their capital expenditure (CAPEX) on building data centers without reducing their ability to innovate and come out with new offerings. And in the current troubled market condition, it allows organizations to pay for actual usage rather than build to handle the worst-case usage scenarios as most data centers are today. For the developer, potential cloud platforms include Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Google’s App Engine, IBM’s DB2 on Demand, and VMware. Smaller companies are emerging to simply the management process and provide easy scale up and down based on market needs: RightScale, FastScale, and CA’s Spectrum Infrastructure Manager.
But we haven’t yet seen similar investment in the applications frameworks and development tools. If we expect to see the current cloud infrastructure filled with applications and being used to the max, we need to see developers building new apps for the cloud and porting over existing apps. So why are developers stalling?
Here’s an overview of some key difficulties they face when moving to the cloud:
1. If you’re an application provider, your customers expect to be able to run your applications on many different platforms, whether on a departmental server, an array of blade servers in the data center, hosted with external on-demand data center provider, or on one of the market’s cloud offerings. Unfortunately, clients assume any application they buy into should be able to support those multiple target run-time environments, but the reality is that those different platforms have different characteristics. You can’t simply write once and deploy anywhere. For example, if you want to move your app from a Microsoft-based server to the Google App Engine, you’ll probably will end up with a complete rewrite of your application.
2. The next issue is how the new cloud paradigm, tools, and application programming interface (API) blend with a software developer’s internal technologies and skills. Starting with application modeling and prototyping tasks, all the way to the deployment and maintenance phases, it’s critical that whatever platform a development company works with internally can also support the development, deployment and management of the cloud application. If not, developers may be forced to turn to ad-hoc alternatives that could end-up requiring additional expensive investments.
3. We cannot omit the skills issue. Assuming enterprise developers today are heavily invested in .Net or Java, do we expect them to learn new development language and frameworks, like the current proposal from Google App Engine that expect developers to write with Python (some support for Java as well these days, with promises to expand support for Java and other languages) or to learn new frameworks like Ruby on Rails? Or should they continue to develop using existing skills in .Net/Java platforms?
4. Another looming question is, how do you leverage investments in existing interfaces, user experience, data structure, and application logic when moving an app to a new platform? Is it possible at all, or does the existing application have to be completely rewritten? Alternatively, does a developer give up on the efficiency that’s being offered with the promise of cloud computing?
5. With optimization, can a software developer’s application framework take advantage of the run-time environment to run natively and connect natively to the different cloud services? Or do will the app just run as an isolated instance on a shared infrastructure with an optimized billing mechanism?
6. What would be the operational costs of an application in the cloud? Does the development company have tools to asses those costs? Can it minimize the amount of bandwidth consumption in order to lower its runtime fees or make sure it serves the largest number of concurrent users on lowest costs?
7. With regards to the discovery of the different cloud providers’ API and services, are those automatically discovered, or should developers assume they need to develop their own calls for each service, using different API’s syntax?
8. Lastly, there’s the question of flexibility and transparency. Developers may like to realize the true economical benefit of the cloud and move their application from one platform to the other without the need to change any line of code. We need to push for true abstractions of proprietary interfaces within the standard development platforms.
The quest for a true cloud application framework, open enough to allow developers to make full use of existing code and skills, is probably at its infancy these days. But the requirements are clear, and once they’re met, we’ll see more developers step forward and invest in developing and migrating new and existing applications to the cloud to cut expenses both for themselves and for their customers.
In addition to my company, Gizmox, there are a number of other players working on solutions of various kinds, including Potix, which is trying to devise a solution for the Java-based community (where Gizmox focuses on the .Net community), and Appcelerator, which provides a bridge between web development skills and the enterprise market.
Oracle’s Sun Deal Snagged in Brussels
Summary
Analysis
Google Noop project features JVM-based language
Noop language project is intended to encourage industry best practices and discourage 'worst offenses'
Google is hosting a language project called Noop, which initially targets the Java Virtual Machine and is intended to encourage industry best practices and discourage "worst offenses."
Noop is pronounced noh-awp, like the machine instruction, the Noop Web page says. It is in early stages of development and is being worked on by people within Google and outside of Google, a Google representative said.
[ Check out InfoWorld's report on different languages for the JVM. | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]
"Noop is a new language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine and in source form looks similar to Java," the Web page says. "The goal is to build dependency injection and testability into the language from the beginning rather than rely on third-party libraries as all other languages do."
In addition to dependency injection, Noop favors testability, immutability, readable code, properties, and strong typing. It also endorses executable, up-to-date documentation. "Dependency Injection changed the way we write software. Spring overtook EJBs in thoughtful enterprises, and Guice and PicoContainer are an important part of well-written applications today," the page says.
Automated testing, especially unit testing, is a crucial part of building reliable software, Noop advocates said. "Any decent software shop should be writing some tests, the best ones are test-driven and have good code coverage," according to the Noop page.
Offered under an Apache 2.0 license, Noop is opposed to statics, implementation inheritance, primitives, and unnecessary boilerplates.
Three ways are planned for using Noop source files: through a Java translator that produces Java source; use of an interpreter that reads and evaluates Noop code and compiled to Java bytecode.
Advocates of Noop believe maintained code is read more than it is written, so readers are favored. Enforcement of a public API separate from visibility of types and methods also is endorsed.
Noop joins other languages besides Java itself on the JVM, such as JRuby, which provides an implementation of the Ruby language; Jython, supporting Python development, and Scala.
Noop's philosophy on stdlib (standard library) includes picking the best implementations from other languages, using JodaTime for Data/Time APIs, and using util.concurrent for concurrency and exposing Google collections. Injection will be done in the same style as Objective-C.
Google urges developers to get in loop with Noop
Java-like language addresses software's 'evil sins'
Web developers are being encouraged by the world’s largest ad broker to get in a lather about Google’s Noop language.
Mountain View said that Java Virtual Machine-based Noop, which is pronounced ‘noh-awp’, “attempts to blend the best lessons of languages old and new, while syntactically encouraging industry best-practice and discouraging the worst offences.”
And apparently holier-than-now developers love the list of commandments handed down in this new language.
“The goal is to build dependency injection and testability into the language from the beginning, rather than rely on third-party libraries as all other languages do,” said Google on the Noop code website.
Noop, written under the Apache Licence 2.0 and hosted by Google, supports dependency injection in the language.
Google said developers should be excited about Noop because the language places big emphasis on automated testing, which “is also a crucial part of building reliable software that you can feel confident about supporting and changing over its lifetime.”
Google Delivers New Java-like Language: Noop
The tireless, developer-centric engineers at Google have come up with Noop, a new language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine.
"Noop (pronounced 'noh-awp,' like the machine instruction) is a new language that attempts to blend the best lessons of languages old and new, while syntactically encouraging industry best-practices and discouraging the worst offenses," according to a description of the language on the Noop language Website.
Noop supports dependency injection in the language, testability and immutability. Other key characteristics of Noop, according to the Noop site, include the following: "Readable code is more important than any syntax feature; Executable documentation that's never out-of-date; and Properties, strong typing, and sensible modern stdlib."
Moreover, according to the Noop language home page, some of the thinking behind the creation of the language includes:
"Dependency Injection changed the way we write software. Spring overtook EJB's [Enterprise JavaBeans] in thoughtful enterprises, and Guice and PicoContainer are an important part of well-written applications today.
"Automated testing, especially Unit Testing, is also a crucial part of building reliable software that you can feel confident about supporting and changing over its lifetime. Any decent software shop should be writing some tests, the best ones are test-driven and have good code coverage."
Discussed at the 2009 JVM Language Summit on Sun Microsystems' campus in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sept. 16, Noop has quickly become the topic du jour in the Java development community. Indeed, the Noop site also said, "Noop is a new language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine, and in source form looks similar to Java. The goal is to build dependency injection and testability into the language from the beginning, rather than rely on third-party libraries as all other languages do."
In an August 2009 blog post, James Gosling, the creator of Java and a Sun vice president and fellow, said of the JVM Language Summit:
"The JVM Language Summit is an open technical collaboration among language designers, compiler writers, tool builders, runtime engineers, and VM architects. We will share our experiences as creators of programming languages for the JVM and of the JVM itself. We also welcome non-JVM developers on similar technologies to attend or speak on their runtime, VM, or language of choice."
SGI's Itanium super smokes Java test
Don't bogart that Altix box
Even before Rackable Systems bought the carcass of supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics in April and took its name a month later, the future of the Itanium-based Altix shared memory supercomputers was in question.
Since the takeover, the new SGI has been trying to stir up some interest in the existing machines while not exactly committing to the future Itanium processors from Intel.
What is a supercomputer maker that wants to sell big boxes today (but which is working on a shared memory system code-named "UltraViolet" and taking the NUMAlink technology from the Altix machines and mixing it with the future Intel eight-core "Nehalem EX" processors due early next year) to do? Look for business in the data center by positioning the current shared memory Altix super as a great box to run Java applications, apparently.
SGI teamed up with the Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Germany, one of its largest customers, to run a series of commercial benchmark tests from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation on its high-end Altix 4700 sporting dual-core, 1.6 GHz Itanium 9040 processors. The LRZ has a 1,024-core Altix 4700 set up with 4 TB of shared memory across the NUMA nodes and is one of the most powerful boxes that SGI ever sold. Just for fun, SGI and LRZ carved out half of the machine's cores (which are comprised of 128 two-socket blade servers) and 1.5 TB of shared main memory and let the SPECjbb2005 commercial Java benchmark run like a bat out of hell on the machine.
The Altix 4700 setup was configured with Novell's SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 operating system and Oracle's JRockit JVM, and cranked through more than 9.6 million business operations per second (BOPS) on the SPECjbb2005 test. (One wonders why SGI and LRZ didn't give the SPEC Java test the whole machine, and perhaps bust through 19 million BOPS.)
The benchmark tests come a month after server maker Sun Microsystems was bragging about how well its Sparc T5440 quad-socket servers using its revved 1.6 GHz T2+ did on the SPECjbb2005 test. (The SPECjbb2005 test is essentially the TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark implemented in Java and without the ridiculous disk storage requirements that the TPC-C test carries.) As El Reg reported, a T5440 (which has 32 cores and 256 threads) with 256 GB of main memory was able to deliver 841,380 BOPS using Solaris 10 and the HotSpot JVM from Sun.
While that is pretty good BOPS, upstart server maker 3Leaf Systems stole the SPECjbb2005 show with a NUMA cluster based on an InfiniBand backbone and special three-socket system boards that put two quad-core Opteron 8384 processors and a special NUMA ASIC called Voyager on the SPECjbb2005 test. With 128 cores and 488 GB of main memory, running 3Leaf's own DVVM hypervisor and the combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and Oracle's JRockit JVM, the 3Leaf Voyager box cranked through 5.5 million BOPS.
Here's the important part if you are SGI. An Altix 4700 tested back in the fall of 2007 held the SPECjbb2005 record, surpassing 5.18 million BOPS.
With 3Leaf Systems getting ready to do a server launch any day now and very likely using more powerful six-core Opteron processors and faster interconnects, SGI has to do a pre-emptive strike on 3Leaf's impending launch to hold the title. 3Leaf was mum on its plans, and sources at the company say that it only did the SPEC Java test at all because it was a "business requirement" and that it would have rather waited for its fall product launch.
While all of this leapfrogging is technically interesting, I don't know of one Altix 4700 that has ever been installed to run Java applications or commercial ERP systems, but over the years, SGI (the old SGI, that is), has occasionally run some tests to try to stir up interest.
What many of us observed so long ago is that for SGI to survive, it might need to go broad and support commercialized workloads like Java middleware or databases for transaction processing. (That was not the original design intent of the "Starfire" 64-socket server that SGI stupidly sold to Sun Microsystems in 1996, but Sun took that box and rode the dot-com boom with it brilliantly, becoming a player in commercial data center computing in the process.) But for SGI to go corporate would have taken precious resources away from the central HPC applications that the Altix 4700 was truly designed to handle. So SGI dabbled here and there, but never made a big push. Perhaps with the Nehalem EX-based UltraViolet NUMA machines due early next year (maybe), this will change. But it seems unlikely that SGI will do anything with the Itanium-based Altix boxes other than to continue to sell and support what it has. (Yes, I know there is some vague talk about possibly supporting the future "Tukwila" quad-core Itaniums in the UltraViolet systems.)
The real pity (perhaps) is that Java, because of its interpreted nature and therefore its high overhead compared to compiled languages, has not found a place in mainstream supercomputing. But HPC shops like compiled programs written in Fortran and C++ because they run close to the iron. And commercial data centers, which are more conservative than bleeding-edge HPC labs, are unlikely to venture far from the familiar x64 or RISC/Unix SMP platforms on which they currently run Java and database workloads.
SGI has also put the Altix 4700 through a bunch of other SPEC paces. The recent tests include the SPECint_rate_006 integer benchmark, the result of which you can see here and which shows the Altix 4700 at LRZ with all 1,024 cores humming hitting 9,030 on the test. (By comparison, a two-socket Xeon 5570 box does about 250 on this test, and this result from SGI is over four times as high as the largest SMP boxes from IBM, Sun, and Fujitsu tested to date.)
SGI also put the SPECfp_rate2000 floating point test on the LRZ box, and got the same 10,600 rating that it got on a similarly sized box using the faster 1.66 GHz Itanium 9150s it tested in January 2009. You can see the floating point test results here. SGI's result is more than six times that which IBM can deliver with its 64-core Power 595 machine in raw floating point performance as gauged by SPECfp_rate2000; it is also more than 7.6 times what Hewlett-Packard can deliver in a single system image with 128 of the same Itanium cores in its Integrity Superdome and six times what Fujitsu and Sun can deliver with the 256-core Sparc Enterprise M9000. ®
Most Mobile Sites Not Making The Grade
Opera Mini 5 [Preview]
A year after the arrival of Opera Mini 4, it is now time to graduate to the next version of Opera Mini, arguably the worlds most widely used Mobile Browser.
The Beta version of Opera Mini 5 has just been released, and as always, we take close look at the browser. The browser has been released at a time when quite a few contenders have been at Opera heels to gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive mobile browser market. The players apart from Opera include Skyfire, Bolt and even Mozilla's Fennec. With Opera Mini 5, Opera once again seems all set to retain its position in the mobile browser arena.
Opera Mini 5 takes a giant leap in terms of look and feel with almost nothing that makes it resemble its older brother. The icons, the buttons and almost every element of the browser sports a new, fresher, rounded look - compared to the more "business like" approach of its older versions. Even the icons have been given a facelift. And guess what, the changes here are not just cosmetic. Under the hood, Opera Mini now gets some real firepower - tabbed browsing included. Perhaps the most sought after feature for the browser ever since its inception back in 2005. So, what's new? Lots In fact! Let's take a look.
The UI
The first thing you'd notice about the Opera Mini 5, right from the installation procedure, is the changed look and feel of the browser. The white installation window is now black and there is a "new" Opera logo as well. Post installation you get a welcome screen that mimics the look of the Opera Mini's desktop cousin, the Opera 10, complete with speed dials that you can customize according to your browsing habits. Depending on the kind of device you are using, Opera will adjust itself and optimize its looks to suit your device.
Most of the screenshots you see here are on an Omnia HD and for the same reason some things might not look familiar for those using a normal "keypad" enabled phone. The interface is snappy and responds immediately to your commands. For touch devices, there is a slight resemblance to the Apple and Android browsers with buttons being easily clickable. The URL text entry field is STILL separate from the search box - but they are in the same line instead of being atop each other as in the previous version. A major change we found in the UI is that entering URLs is a lot easier now and clicking a text entry field doesn't lead you to a page where you enter your text and hit OK to come back to the page. In fact, Opera Mini uses a QWERTY keypad of its own on full touchscreen devices (which works quite decently)
Opera Mini 5 beta offers tabbed browsing
Opera has released a beta version of its latest mobile-phone web browser, Opera Mini 5.
The beta, which introduces tabbed browsing, touchscreen operations and password management to the popular browser, was announced on Wednesday.
"The purpose of doing a beta is testing," the Opera Mini team said in a blog post on Wednesday. "Opera Mini 5 has been in development for a long time and we feel it's about time to push the product live and let you take it for a spin. We rely heavily on your feedback to polish it for the final release."
Opera Mini is the most lightweight of the company's browsers, and is available as a free download. Opera Mobile is a more full-featured version that is available as a paid-for browser, but is often sold by the company to handset manufacturers for pre-installation.
Opera has released a beta version of its latest mobile-phone web browser, Opera Mini 5.
The beta, which introduces tabbed browsing, touchscreen operations and password management to the popular browser, was announced on Wednesday.
"The purpose of doing a beta is testing," the Opera Mini team said in a blog post on Wednesday. "Opera Mini 5 has been in development for a long time and we feel it's about time to push the product live and let you take it for a spin. We rely heavily on your feedback to polish it for the final release."
Opera Mini is the most lightweight of the company's browsers, and is available as a free download. Opera Mobile is a more full-featured version that is available as a paid-for browser, but is often sold by the company to handset manufacturers for pre-installation.
Opera Mini 5 for BlackBerry: Killer Keyboard Shortcuts
Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry browser has long been the laughing stock of the mobile space for its lack of speed. Javascript-heavy pages frequently bring it to a standstill. And since the browser has problems rendering many common Web pages, simply surfing the Web for a quick recipe or to answer a question can be like pulling teeth.
In other words, BlackBerry users have been dealing with a sub-par browsing experience for quite some time--unless, of course, those users were smart enough to download and install one of the few quality third-party mobile browsers available for RIM smartphones.
Rumors suggest RIM's well on its way to releasing a revamped BlackBerry browser of its own. But yesterday Norwegian-developer Opera Software upped the BlackBerry browsing-ante with the beta release of its latest mobile browser: Opera Mini 5. Though not BlackBerry-specific--the software's compatible with most Java-based handhelds--it blows RIM's default browser away, with new features like tabbed-browsing, advanced cut-and-paste and a built-in password manager.
Ted Miller, Opera Software communications manager, told me last spring that roughly 2.5 million BlackBerry users employ Opera Mini on their devices. That's more than 15 percent of RIM's total BlackBerry customer base.
I've been using Opera Mini for years; it's my BlackBerry browser of choice. During that time, I discovered a number of helpful Opera Mini keyboard shortcuts for BlackBerry users with full QWERTY keyboards. However, many of those shortcuts have been modified in Opera Mini beta 5. After some digging, I found the following BlackBerry keyboard shortcuts for Opera Mini 5 beta.
The numeral keys on your full-QWERTY BlackBerry are used to page up, down, left and right within Opera Mini 5, as well as to zoom in and out on a page. For example:
* 2 = Page Up
* 8 = Page Down
* 4 = Page Left
* 6 = Page Right
* 5= Zoom In/Out
Your Enter key works to confirm selections, or click a link, just like a tap of the trackball.
The letter "Q" is the main Opera Mini 5 "shortcut key." Various numeral keys can be pressed along with the letter "Q" to activate browsing shortcuts. For instance:
* Q + 1: Clear Page of Cursor, Selection Box
* Q + 2: Show Blank URL Field to Navigate to New Page
* Q + 3: Search for Specific Text on a Page
* Q + 4: Access "Speed-Dial" Home Screen
* Q + 5: View of Add to Bookmarks
* Q + 6: View Browsing History
* Q + 8: Access Browser Settings
* Q + 9: View or Add to Saved Web pages
Download Opera Mini 5 beta over-the-air (OTA) via BlackBerry browser, and let me know if I missed any new keyboard shortcuts. You can also visit Opera's website for more on Opera Mini.
Note: Opera Mini 5 is still in beta, and as such, you many encounter some bugs in the software. I've only found a few minor quirks in the 36-hours or so I've been using the app, but I did notice that it consumes quite a bit of free BlackBerry memory when not in use, so make sure you close out the browser when you're done. To do so, tap your BlackBerry Menu key--located directly to the left of your trackball--scroll all the way to the right on the top banner and click the browser on/off power switch.
Opera Mini 5 beta released for BlackBerry and Java phones
One of the things I enjoy about my Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian devices is the ability to load up different 3rd party web browsers and today we see that the latest version of Opera Mini 5 beta has been released for installation. Simply go to m.opera.com/next in your mobile browser to download the new proxy-based web browser on your BlackBerry or Java-enabled phone.
This latest beta of Opera Mini includes support for tabbed browsing, speed dial (one click favorites), optimizations for touchscreen and keypad devices, and a password manager.
One aspect I love about Opera Mini is the ability to login to My Opera and have all my bookmarks appear across mobile platforms.
Oracle Unveils Database Machine Made With Sun Micro (ORCL,JAVA,HP)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Indonesia: Earthquake Rocks Java
Terracotta for Hibernate Drives Dramatic Improvements in Application Performance While Reducing Database Costs
Power of Terracotta Now Available as High-Performance Distributed Cache Plug-In
for Hibernate, Supercharging the Popular Data Access Backbone for Enterprise
Java Applications
SAN FRANCISCO--(Business Wire)--
Terracotta, a recognized leader in infrastructure software for enterprise Java
scalability, today announced the availability of Terracotta 3.1. The new
release, which is already available for download, includes Terracotta for
Hibernate, a plug-in distributed cache for the widely-used Hibernate
Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) framework. Coupled with Terracotta`s recent
acquisition of the world`s most popular Java caching framework, Ehcache, this
new release marks yet another significant milestone in delivering simple
scalability to a wider range of organizations that build software using the Java
platform.
Organizations running Java applications are actively seeking ways to continue
using the Hibernate framework they prefer, while reducing the heavy load on the
database it can create. Based on actual deployment results, Terracotta for
Hibernate slashes latency to times typically under 1 millisecond, making
applications far more responsive, with results end-users can see immediately. By
simply using Terracotta for Hibernate as a second-level cache, applications
often see throughput boosts of ten times and database load reductions of 30-90
percent. These performance gains occur along with Terracotta`s guarantee that
all the data in the cache is highly available and up-to-date across servers.
This ensures applications function seamlessly without sacrificing data
integrity.
"Terracotta 3.1 fills a long-standing gap in object-relational mapping
technology, one that has driven unnecessarily high database spending for a few
years," said Ari Zilka, chief technology officer and co-founder of Terracotta.
"Hibernate combined with Terracotta gives developers the development simplicity
they sought in ORMs in the first place, with the high throughput their customers
demand, along with less tuning hassle, all for dramatically lower cost."
By managing frequently-accessed data in Terracotta, Hibernate users no longer
need to provision databases for peak load, or purchase expensive database
clustering features, and as a result can drive large cost savings for their
organizations while delivering a higher quality of service to their end users.
Terracotta for Hibernate capabilities in Terracotta 3.1 include:
* High Performance, Coherent Distributed Cache- Increase application capacity by
ten times by reducing database load from 30-90 percent;
* Unmatched Workload Visualization- Terracotta for Hibernate`s dashboard is the
only product that provides a cluster-wide view of all Hibernate activity,
showing you at a glance how much load is taken off your database. Get individual
server statistics, as well as aggregate cluster-wide views of key Hibernate and
cache statistics;
* Hibernate Optimized for Clustered Operation- Terracotta for Hibernate uses the
Terracotta scalability platform to optimize Hibernate in the context of a
cluster of application servers;
* Runtime Configuration and Control-Developers and operators gain runtime
control over critical cache settings like per region cacheability and
time-to-live (TTL) and time-to-idle (TTI) parameters; and
* Broad Container Support - Terracotta 3.1 supports a wide array of Java
containers, including Apache Tomcat, Oracle Weblogic, Jetty, JBoss and Sun
Glassfish.
This latest release is a major step in addressing the common cost and
performance concerns associated with databases. Terracotta 3.1 also protects
customers` existing investment in database infrastructure by making it easier to
be more selective about what data should be placed in a database and what data
is better managed within Terracotta. Terracotta 3.1, which includes Terracotta
for Hibernate, is available immediately for download at www.terracotta.org.
About Terracotta, Inc.
Terracotta is infrastructure software that provides affordable and scalable high
availability for Java applications. Companies use Terracotta to offload work
from databases and application servers and to reduce their development efforts.
Founded in 2003, Terracotta, Inc. is a private firm headquartered in San
Francisco. More information on the company, its products and its open source
community is available at www.terracotta.org.
Spin Cycle: Big Brother, zombies and java
The Turkish military just performed a daring rescue, freeing nine women who had moved into an Istanbul mansion, thinking they were joining a "Big Brother"-type reality show. Instead, they became prisoners, their every move filmed and streamed live on the Internet for two straight months. As of last Thursday, the not-quite contestants are safely home with their families.
No word on how soon the Turkish military can rescue Julie and Jordan from "Big Brother: Season 11," but we suspect these heroes may have been behind Paula Abdul's escape from "American Idol."
Laboring
Meanwhile in other reality TV news, MTV hosted a holiday weekend marathon of its new series, "16 and Pregnant," earlier this month. And yes, we'll wait here quietly till you recall which holiday that was. Yep, it was a Labor Day salute to teen pregnancy. We can't wait till Thanksgiving.
Zombie rights
We hear that filmmaker George A. Romero — perhaps best known for his seminal work, "Night of the Living Dead," although his oeuvre includes several subsequent zombie flicks — believes his latest film will help advance his favorite cause, anti-discrimination. We're not sure which flavor of discrimination Romero is targeting in "Survival of the Dead,"
but the plot involves soldiers Patrick O'Flynn and Shamus Muldoon and their platoon escaping to a tropical island, the last safe outpost on a planet overrun by the undead.We suspect Romero is standing up for zombie rights, but the better cause might be the protection of actors from stereotypical Irish names.
Cuppa Joe, mate?
Remind us not to get sick in Australia. Doctors at Queensland hospitals are so exhausted by their 80-hour shifts, they're making mistakes and, according to a government document on fatigue management, patients are dying. The solution? More java. Actually, the official recommendation was six cups of coffee. Per doctor.
We're not sure what scares us more, sleep-deprived physicians or surgeons with really shaky hands. Perhaps those Turkish military police could rescue the docs too. Or at least their patients.
A long way off in late 2010 or early 2011
A long way off in late 2010 or early 2011, the Sparc Enterprise server lineup gets a speed boost to 3 GHz with the Jupiter-E chips.After that, in 2012, Sun has made no commitment to the kicker line of Fujitsu "Advanced Product Line 2" servers coming from Fujitsu. These APL2 machines are presumably to be based on the "Venus" eight-core Sparc64-VIII processor, which has a Sparc64-VIIIfx variant aimed at supercomputers. That Sparc64-VIIIfx chip will be used in a 10 petaflops massively parallel machine being built by Fujitsu and paid for by the Japanese government under the 1.2bn Project Keisoku effort.
All of this is subject to change, and some of it most certainly will once Oracle takes control of Sun.
Intel and Sun Micro Product Roadmap Updates
* Intel will show off "Westmere," the first processors built using a 32 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process.
* CPU manufacturing shrank from 65nm to 45nm to 32nm and next to 22nm.
* The next chip architecture will come in 2010, in the form of the new architecture codenamed "Sandy Bridge," which will also be disclosed at this month's IDF. Intel's roadmap is process shrinkage and then better architecture and then process shrink etc... (tick-tock)
* This new-generation high-k metal gate transistor formula will give Intel "a 3+ year advantage in addressing leaky and energy inefficient transistors," according to a blog post from Intel spokesman Bill Kircos Intel has shipped >200 million 45nm CPUs using high-k+ metal gate transistors.
* For the first time, Intel has developed a full-featured SoC process technology to complement the CPU-specific technology. This version is for our smarter System on Chip (SoC) product efforts, which emphasize lower power transistors
* Intel NMOS transistors now have 19% performance improvement over their 45nm counterparts and our PMOS transistors now have a 28% performance improvement over their 45nm counterparts.
* Another IDF highlight: Nehalem-based chips codenamed "Jasper Forest" and designed for the embedded and storage sectors. This family of products will bring Nehalem to the embedded market, offering integrated PCI Express (PCIe) and an integrated I/O hub in a dual-processor Xeon processor.
* Nehalem will allow for much faster and denser storage and communications solutions such as IPTV, VoIP, NAS, SAN and wireless radio network controllers
The UK Register has information on the Sun Sparc Roadmap. The 16-core "Rock" UltraSparc-RK processor for Sun's once-and-never "Supernova" line of servers is not on the roadmap. The one-page roadmap is one given Sun's customers - and presumably also Fujitsu's customers - have been shown about the future Sparc processor lineup.
