GNUe Traffic #73 For 22 Mar 2003 Editor: Peter Sullivan By Arturas Kriukovas and Peter Sullivan "if no one appears to answer gently lay a box of glazed donuts on the proverbial irc table and jcater should show up within the hour ;) - "He's picky about which doughnuts, though." - "i said 'glazed'" Table Of Contents * Standard Format * Text Format * XML Source * Introduction * Threads Covered 1. 13 Mar 2003 Understanding the GNUe framework 2. 14 Mar 2003 AppServer API and XMLRPC 3. 14 Mar 2003 Understanding the GNUe framework 4. 17 Mar 2003 Using GNUe Tools with Oracle on Microsoft Windows 5. 18 Mar 2003 Hiring GNUe Developers 6. 19 Mar 2003 Using setup-cvs.py to set up GNUe Introduction This covers the three main mailing lists for the GNU Enterprise (http:// www.gnuenterprise.org) project, plus the #gnuenterprise IRC channel. GNUe Traffic is now group-authored: if you'd like to join the team, let us know ( mailto:psu@burdonvale.co.uk) 1. Understanding the GNUe framework 13 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 13 Mar 2003" Summary By Arturas Kriukovas Topics: DCL People: Derek Neighbors, Jeff Bailey Derek Neighbors (Derek) said there is a need to "'enhance' the deb's. People are having trouble with them :(. At least 5 people have made comments like" "i did apt-get install dcl, now what the hell do i do?". Jeff Bailey (jbailey) planned it "perhaps this weekend" . Derek offered that if Jeff had not got time to do config stuff, he could provide "like a one paragraph post install instruction list and have the deb pop up that blue deb screen that says ... you need to to the following you can find this list at /usr/ share/docs/dcl/install.html or something, i.e. so during the install it points them somewhere to get more information" . 2. AppServer API and XMLRPC 14 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 14 Mar 2003" Summary By Arturas Kriukovas Topics: Application Server People: Jan Ischebeck, Reinhard M?ller Jan Ischebeck (siesel) asked Reinhard M?ller (Reinhard) whether he had "any ideas to change the API to make it XMLRPC conform" . Reinhard admitted he didn't know "what xmlrpc defines and what not, what data types xmlrpc knows. If all else fails we could concatenate all strings of the table together and define column dividors, row dividors and an escape character, and pass it as a single string like." Jan hoped there would be no need to go that far. After looking at the specs at xmlrpc.org Jan found a structure type, "that would mean, that we could still use our api." Reinhard raised a question - "we defined the result of fetch being a 2-dimensional array, but you impelemented it as an array of dictionaries. I guess we must at least switch to the 2-dimensional array for xmlrpc conformance. I'm not sure if a struct helps us." Jan found out "that difference between API documentation: (2dim array) and implementation (2dim dictionary)" . He was thinking what would be easier to implement. Reinhard offered looking for what would be easier to transport, because implementation would be no big difference. 3. Understanding the GNUe framework 14 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 14 Mar 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan Topics: Why GNUe?, Forms, Small Business People: Christian Selig, Derek Neighbors, Jason Cater It was asked what two-tier and three-tier meant. Christian Selig (lupo) said "in two-tier mode, you have layout and software logic on the client side and the database on the server side - in three-tier, you have layout on the client, software logic stored in an application server and the database on a server - through an intelligent driver model, gnue is able to operate in both modes" although, as of time of writing, 2-tier was the most advanced/usable. It was asked whether GNUe could be used for a customer and address database. Christian said "this is quite realistic - of course, right now you have to write the application for yourself, based on the gnue tools" . It was asked if GNUe supported custom widgets, such as a calander/date selector. Christian noted that there was already - or would be - support for input masks, but further widgets could be written using python. Derek Neighbors (revDeke) said "the team is trying to make it more plausible to 'easily' plug in new custom widgets - like 'search' boxes, date pickers" . Jason Cater (jcater) emphasised that "custom widgets are *not encouraged - but will be supported at some point" . Derek agreed - "it puts you in a bad position of having a 'custom' (read non supported) framework - what we generally ask is if there is somethign you do not see ask - i think in most cases there is sufficient comprimise made to get 'functionality' into the framework - that avoids the need for 'custom' components" . Jason emphasised that "GNUe is not a GUI framework... it's a data manipulation and reporting framework" Derek said that GNUe encouraged people to ask "the developers 'how can i do 'X' - and see if they can provide an answer by extending existing widgets. Sometimes the answer will be 'we have no intention to support X' - in which case likely gnue isnt a good choice for the application at hand" , emphasising "gnue is not glade - it is specific to database productivity applications - /me wouldnt write a cdplayer, webbrowser or image editor with gnue framework :)" Because GNUe chose "to support a myriad of platforms from curses to gtk to qt to html to you name it - e limit ourselves to a much more concise 'widget' catalog" . He felt that a customer/address database would be "a 'no brainer' gnue type application i.e. its kind of thing gnue was made for" . He thought "its reasonable for us to support 'calendar' date picker entry fields - /me notes we dont currently, but i think it would be feasible request" . He also suggested looking at GNUe Small Business, which already had contact manager functionality - "that probably fits to a small degree the first part of the question in being a customer database - if not their style, certainly it provides a reference to how one can do a customer database" . 4. Using GNUe Tools with Oracle on Microsoft Windows 17 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 17 Mar 2003" Summary By Arturas Kriukovas Topics: Common, Forms, Designer People: Anil Prabhakar, Arturas Kriukovas, Bajusz Tam?s Anil Prabhakar (anilp) asked whether it was possible "to get involved in the gnu enterprise development" with a Windows2000 PC. The aswer was positive. He wanted to know more about the "development environment and the technologies used" so Arturas Kriukovas (Arturas) named "python as a main language" listed the supported databases. Anil asked whether he needed anything else additional to the "GNUe-Tools-0.4.3-setup-debug-on.exe" download and the answer was "No". After installation Anil could not not understand "Editor for connection". This was called via Start Menu -> Programs -> GNUe -> GNUe Connections. Arturas explained that "this is to define your connection to the database" . Anil queried where he could " find the db scripts to create the necessary schemas" . Arturas explained that "you create database yourself, that is you use gnue forms to connect to your database and to work with already existing there data" . He explained "if you know what you need, you can manually create base schema and then connect gnue to it, then work with data. Gnue is not the tool to create db schemas" . Anil asked how to configure connection to a "database whose SID is say "testsid" and the host is say "testhost" and on port "1521"" . Arturas said that "at first you'll have to give some name for this connection (Connection name). Then" the database type went in the Provider field (). "Then you'll need host and port" . Encoding field could be left empty and both rpc type and transport were only needed for appserver. To "Submit" the form it should be saved (although toolbar "Save" button said "Save the record to the db" and nothing seemed to happen when it was clicked). There was a discussion about how to test the connection to an Oracle database (from designer) (try to open datasource editor, schema navigator). Bajusz Tam?s (btami) said that as Anil was trying "the packaged win wersion, it didn't contain any drivers to Oracle" , as these were not freely redistributable. Drivers could be downloaded from DCOracle at http://www.zope.org/Members/matt/ dco2/ (http://www.zope.org/Members/matt/dco2/) (url taken from gnue/common/ README.databases). 5. Hiring GNUe Developers 18 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 18 Mar 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan Topics: Why GNUe? People: Ken MacLeod, Derek Neighbors Ken MacLeod (bitsko) asked "anyone know if there are any companies far enough along using GNUe that they'd be looking to hire GNUe developers? how many core+tier developers currently work for solid GNUe users?" Derek Neighbors (revDeke) said "there are several companies interested in GNUe solutions where they might 'hire a consultant' or 'temp' gnue developer - we have at least two foreign countries that employee gnue developers" . There were about 5 core GNUe developers doing distribution, "coding, documentation, relase, management etc - but there is a large second tier contributor level of probably about 20 that use and sumbit patches on a less frequent basis" . Although "people wont ask for GNUe by name" , it could already meet many requirements "in the small/ medium business market" . Ken agreed - "exactly, but they may be looking for solutions" . 6. Using setup-cvs.py to set up GNUe 19 Mar 2003 Archive Link: "[IRC] 19 Mar 2003" Summary By Peter Sullivan People: Jason Cater Some problems were reported trying to set up the GNUe Tools from CVS. Jason Cater (jcater) asked "are you using setup-cvs.py? or setup.py?" He advised "we haven't updated setup.py yet... that's on our list of things to do for the pending release" He would "recommend using setup-cvs.py when running from cvs" . GNUe needed version 2.2 or higher of wxPython - "you'll prefer 2.4 though" . Sharon And Joy Kernel Traffic is grateful to be developed on a computer donated by Professor Greg Benson and Professor Allan Cruse in the Department of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. This is the same department that invented FlashMob Computing. Kernel Traffic is hosted by the generous folks at kernel.org. All pages on this site are copyright their original authors, and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.0.