You are in a pub and you hear someone say “that is Betamax vs VHS all over again”. What is that about? It is an interesting story which might effect your next career move, so listen up.
(more…)Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Betamax, ISO Networking, CP/M: When the “best” technology is not the best.
Posted in History, Technology, tagged betamax, cp/m, History, networking, osi, pc-dos, procurement, vhs on August 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »
I don’t need a schema for NOSQL, right?
Posted in Database Management Systems, Still-coding, Technology, tagged json-schema, NOSQL, SQL on July 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A schema means different things for an SQL and a NOSQL database management system. If you are using SQL, you have to tell the system about the format of the data before you can use – that is the schema. When it comes to NOSQL databases everything is different. You don’t need a schema, you simply present data and the system stores it in whatever format you send it.
Each document in a collection1 can be a different layout and different types of data. The flexibility of NOSQL databases suggests that data design is less important. For example I read: “… since NoSQL doesn’t necessitate the need for a schema, you avoid the expense and time of that initial design stage.”
I don’t think so
(more…)Why do we need JSON when we have XML?
Posted in History, Technology, tagged json, XML on July 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »
For decades, software developers had to struggle with getting computers to talk to each other. Businesses developed systems to do different things at different times on different hardware, and integrating the data was rarely on peoples priority lists. Customers would tell the bank about changing their address and still get mail about their mortgage sent to an old address because the mortgage system had it’s own address file.
Then came XML. A standardised way of exchanging information, with formal standards for different types of application. For example: FIXML – Financial Information Exchange and BEERXML – Brewing information. There is a list here. There are about a thousand of them.
XML is human-readable and similar to well-know HTML so easy to use if a little long-winded.
Well, I am glad that is done and dusted. A major problem for IT systems has been solved. Then came another standard.
(more…)TypeScript. I quite like it.. plus a bonus rant about languages
Posted in History, Technology, tagged Coding, javascript, PL/1, typescript on July 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Over the years people have developed an unbelievable number of coding languages. They all do pretty much the same job in pretty much the same way. Personally I have coded in Mercury Autocode, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/1, LISP, Assembler, PERL, basic, C, C++ and JavaScript plus probably some others I have forgotten. Check the list of popular coding languages and you won’t find any of these except C variants and JavaScript1. That is because I have been out of the business for a while and coding languages are items of fashion. Every couple of years a new language becomes the latest hot language. Right now that is Python for reasons that totally escape me.
To make this clear. The world only needs a couple of coding languages, one for regular applications and another (maybe) to write operating systems in. None of the languages for general coding discussed here are a significant improvement on PL/1 which was invented in the 1960s2 , except for support for object orientation, which at the time had not been invented. Had a PL/2 been developed with Objects supported we could all just get on with coding.
But we are where we are.
(more…)IT Pioneers: Hats off to Gary Kildall (who?)
Posted in History, IT Pioneers, Technology, tagged apple, cp/m, Gary Kildall, History, IT Pioneers, micro computers, superbrain, visicalc on June 25, 2023| 1 Comment »
I started coding in then 1960’s on a Ferranti Mercury. It was as big as a house and had less computer power than my watch. But at the time we thought it was pretty cool. Over the years, Moor’s Law turned out to be pretty accurate. The most powerful computers doubled in power about every two years. Commercial systems got smaller. From as big as a house, to the size of a room, to the size of a desk, then a largeish box in a rack.
But in the mid 1970’s something happened off the Moore’s Law track. They managed to fit all the components of a low-power computer on a single chip. They were mass produced and relatively cheap. The engineers that built it had in mind using them for process control, calculators or computer terminals.
Enter Gary Kildall
But a genius called Gary Kildall saw another potential use for these devices.
(more…)I don’t need a schema for NOSQL, right?
Posted in Database Management Systems, Still-coding, Technology, tagged Database, express, json, node.js, NOSQL, sailsjs, schema, SQL on May 4, 2023| Leave a Comment »
A schema means different things for an SQL and a NOSQL database management system. If you are using SQL, you have to tell the system about the format of the data before you can use – that is the schema. When it comes to NOSQL databases everything is different. You don’t need a schema, you simply present data and the system stores it in whatever format you send it.
Each document in a collection1 can be a different layout and different types of data. The flexibility of NOSQL databases suggests that data design is less important. For example I read: “… since NoSQL doesn’t necessitate the need for a schema, you avoid the expense and time of that initial design stage.”
I don’t think so
(more…)NOSQL – a cautionary tale
Posted in Still-coding, Technology, tagged NOSQL on February 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »
The sales manager came down to the IT department and looked around. He spotted a young developer who looked a bit bored. His name plate said ‘Luke’. “I have a small job for you if you are interested”. Luke nodded. “We get sales orders from out customers. The warehouse handles them but we can’t get access to the data. Can you write a little program to store then on a computer for me.” Luke looked at a file of sample orders. “Sure no problem.”
He turned to the jaded old database administrator (Joda) in the corner “This is a great application for a NOSQL Document database like MongoDB or CouchDB.” Joda looked up – “That is a decision, regret you will”. Luke muttered something about ‘luddite’ and went back to his desk and coded up one NOSQL document per sales order, with customer details and an embedded array of order lines. The logical way to solve the problem.
(more…)I tried CouchDB and I like it
Posted in Still-coding, Technology, tagged CouchDB, Database, NOSQL on November 10, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Firestore didn’t go well for me.
Posted in Still-coding, Technology, tagged Database, Firestore, NOSQL on October 11, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I decided to use my lockdown project SUDSJS.com to test out a few different NOSQL database management systems (DBMS).
SUDSJS is written in JavaScript using the node.js server-side system and I designed it so that I could plug in different drivers for different databases. I wrote database drivers for MySQL, SQLite 3 and PostgreSQL. The first NOSQL system I tried was MongoDB, and the SUDSJS.com test site is currently running using this (correction – it is now running on CouchDB). The second NOSQL system I tried was Firestore from Google.
It didn’t go well.
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Bob Browning's blog 