Wednesday April 30, 2003

Why can't we all just get along?

Jeremy Rayner reported an unfortunate bug against Roller, but it's not quite Roller's fault: we use LIMIT in our SQL to limit the results of some queries (most noticeably the Home page). But HSQLDB doesn't support "LIMIT #", unlike MySQL and Postgresql - you have to use TOP #. Of course, writing our persistence layer such that it knows what database you are using would be lame.

In the course of my research into this problem I found wide inconsistencies in MySql, Postgresql, and Hsqldb (didn't look at the others). Read the comments in the bug report above and you'll see what I mean. So for the last couple days its been perculating in the back of my mind on how to fix this. Fixing it in Roller's code isn't appropriate, it's really up to the persistence layers (Castor & Hibernate) to address the differences in databases.

In my research I had also come across a couple similar issues entered against Castor, and one proposed solution. That solution wouldn't address our problem, but after a day of simmering the answer came to mind. I'm really rather pleased with myself, which is the whole reason for this post.

Hey, this is "Vanity Foul" after all.
( Apr 30 2003, 08:36:21 PM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/why_can_t_we_all

Tuesday April 29, 2003

Roller needs ETag support

Note to self: We added Last-Modified/If-Modified-Since support some time ago, to be complete we should add ETag support. ( Apr 29 2003, 01:05:06 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/roller_needs_etag_support

Sunday April 27, 2003

Re: Very Fricken Cool!

I have to echo Matt here, what Dave has done to Roller's Wiki looks very good. Keep up the good work Dave! I try to contribute here and there, but you da man! ( Apr 27 2003, 08:15:35 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_very_fricken_cool

Friday April 25, 2003

Help, I'm evil!

Just as was Carlos, so am I

( Apr 25 2003, 11:00:39 PM ) Entertainment Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/help_i_m_evil

Javier's calendar issue fixed

Dave Johnson checked in a fix for Javier's issue with the calendar rendering. Thanks Dave! Sorry Javier, but you won't get to see it until Anthony is confident in Roller 0.9.7.x.
( Apr 25 2003, 03:35:49 PM ) Roller Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/javier_s_calendar_issue_fixed

Re: Velocity vs. JSP

Javier elaborates on the post I previously commented on. It is nice to see the usages explicity expounded on, and I think you will see there is little difference between the JSP+code example and the Velocity version (except that the JSP version has the "ugly" angle brackets: <%= request.getParameter("foo") %> ).

My beef isn't so much with Velocity itself, it does a nice job. It's just that in certain circumstances where a significant amount of logic is required (such as in the calendar example) Velocity's "anti-code" stance becomes a disadvantage. Here again, it is the fanatical proponents of any technology that get my back up: "My technology is the best for everything, and yours stinks!". This isn't Velocity's fault, and one usage I wish I had time to explore more is how it can be used in other contexts. And maybe I'm just dense, but I don't see how the Pull Model as expounded for Velocity et al differs significantly from standard JSP/MVC usage.
( Apr 25 2003, 09:29:30 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_velocity_vs_jsp

Wednesday April 23, 2003

"Major" re-org in process

I finally tackled a bit of Roller restructuring I've been wanting to get to: eliminating the need to include the Castor jar when building Roller's presentation layer. There were some "helper" classes that extended classes from the data model (which require Castor's Timestampable interface).

I managed to shift the extra work the helpers were doing around to other appropriate locations. As a matter of fact, this entry is being written on my "testbed". But I've got to wait for Dave to finish branching the 0.9.7.x release before putting this major change to bed.
( Apr 23 2003, 08:21:28 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/major_re_org_in_process

Re: MVC and the last mile

While not really a reply to Javier's post, I did want to comment on a couple parts. Javier mentions the trouble he had with Roller's calendar: let me put it this way - I looked at reimplementing it in Velocity, but it was considerably more work than doing it in plain old Java.

Everyone (it seems) goes on and on about how wonderful Velocity is. I know its primary purpose isn't as a *web* templating system, and it shows. I have read every article, studied the Developer and User docs extensively, and read all the source code - and I still don't see how it is an improvement on JSP, for this one task. Velocity's beauty is that it isn't limited to web content, and that's about it.
( Apr 23 2003, 07:08:00 PM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1] [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_mvc_and_the_last

For further reading on today's posts:

Absurdities and nonsenses / Javier Castañón's blog : I hope I wasn't misunderstood on my former post about separating data and layout, since I didn't want to critique the Roller's calendar component. It is rendered by a velocimacro and I thought this could be a nice thing, however, Lance doesn't think the same :