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 Sunday, July 06, 2003

UPS: I'm So Glad You Have a Tracking Facility

What's up with this crap:

Status: Billing Information Received
Shipped to: NEWTON CENTRE, MA, US
Shipped or Billed on: Jul 2, 2003


Tracking Number: 1Z 6611 70W 03 0203 807 8 8834  (I changed the #)
Service Type: GROUND
Weight: 1.30 Lbs
Note: UPS has received shipper's billing information electronically. Billing information received does not indicate shipment pickup or drop-off. Please contact the shipper for more details.

So I have a tracking # and you can't tell me squat?  Pathetic.

When: 8:44:24 PM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This   

A Melange of Cool Stuff

Here are a bunch of cool things I've found lately:

 

When: 8:41:02 PM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This   

Something Else for PHP 5: Application Level "Objects" ...

I was just walking back from the drug store when I flashed back to last summer (same type of hot, muggy day I guess) and thought about an all too common php problem: Security Patches not being applied.  And, no, I'm not talking about php itself.  We all know to update that.  What I'm talking about is a php application like phpMyAdmin or WebCalendar or Drupal or anything.  I'm thinking off the cuff here but what abou this:

  • A way for an application to register itself with php when it is invoked the equivalent of "Hello !!! I'm here and my name is phpMyAdmin and my version is 2.1.3.4.a.friday.morning"
  • A display of the active applications added to the bottom of the phpinfo() page organized by most commonly used
  • A check version link which let you see if the versions are up to date presumably by some xml-rpc connection off to a central server.  (ok this is a stretch I know).  This could be a service offered by php.net for a fee perhaps.

If you're an administrator, particularly in a hosted environment, you know to upgrade php for security issues but the customers you have might go install some php application that compromises security.  And then **poof** an sql injection attack takes down a database.

Note: Just a random thought.  Worth what you paid for it but security is always important these days so ... Comments?

When: 1:46:23 PM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This   

If I Was in Charge of Postgres

Postgres has always been sort of the poor step child to MySQL.  A technically excellent product that never has been able to quite catch up.  Now I like MySQL a lot but the recent php licensing snafu (and emphasize the afu) presents Postgres with a huge opportunity.  What I'd do is simple:

Make Postgres compatible with the mysql_* functions in PHP.

Now for those who aren't php folks, let me explain.  The PHP language has a series of functions named mysql_* which do the basic database operations.  They are (I suspect) basically native calls to the built-in MySQL function calls and they're both easy to use and rippingly fast.  Now PHP also offers a database independent API, Pear (think Perl's DBI) but I don't think that's the answer.  If I had to guess most of us use the mysql_* functions just because they're both fast and easy.  Its also non-trivial (IMHO) to move your code from the mysql_* functions to Pear.  I've looked at it and basically walked away from it. 

Yes there are a set of Postgres functions in php too.  But switching over would require rewriting code.  Lots of code.  So what I would do if I was in charge of Postgres would be too:

  • Add a php.ini function which mapped all mysql_* calls to use Postgres
  • Make Postgres accept the common MySQL things that cause problems in Postgres (auto-incrementing keys I'd suspect)
  • Make it easy to make the change 

Let's face facts here -- the php community is bloody well huge.  And we bring a lot of users.  So this is a potentially huge opportunity for Postgres.

Note: I know I'm going to take some heat for this post.  It isn't the right way to do tihngs or this is just plain a hack or whatever.  I'm looking at this not from the pure computer science perspective but from the user's perspective who has to deal with re-engineering his or her application.

PHP / MySQL Licensing Links

When: 11:51:06 AM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This   

Wow!  UltraBar has Feedster Support

Oh my.  My post about the (currently mythical) bloogle bar led to a comment about UltraBar.  What a surprise to find out that it already has Feedster support!  Even implemented correctly no less.  Outstanding.  Works with IE 5 or later. 

Download: http://www.ultrabar.com/

When: 9:34:35 AM  | Permalink:   | comment []  |  IM Me About This   

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Last update: 8/1/2003; 5:50:39 AM.