I have not maintained this blog for the past months due to my lack of interest in blogging. I'll try to put up few thoughts here in the next couple of days.

Stories so far:-

1. Have been working on ASP.Net on Mono
2. Trying out some features available in .Net Framework 2.0 Beta

Ooh, my colleagues seem to be very interested in .Net lately and some of them are even going for Microsoft courses organized by Uniten and NotaAsia in May.

Here are some of my thoughts on those courses:

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I think it'd be better if I share some of the info regarding .Net courses organized by Uniten and NotaAsia. I hope it'll help generate interest in .Net and and familiarize ourselves with the framework of web development in .Net.

1 - .Net IS NOT another web scripting technology or language (shouldn't be comparing it with JSP, Perl, Javascript, PHP etc). It is a FRAMEWORK

2 - ASP.Net is a TECHNOLOGY in .Net Framework that allows developers develop WEB APPS/SOLUTIONS (again, ASP.NET IS NOT a language)

3 - Languages that are supported by .Net (and ASP.NET) - Visual Basic.Net, C#, J#, etc

4 - The Tool in developing .Net application - Microsoft Visual Studio.Net (VS.Net) 2003 (stable version), VS.Net 2005 Beta 1 (codenamed Whidbey). VS.Net is expensive and requires licenses to use. (Around RM3000 per license and software)

Now that we have the basics covered, to the pros n cons of the courses (in my opinion)

Pros:-
1 - Excellent for VB programmers, very familiar coding structure/style (VB.Net is an enhanced version of VB (there are many versions of VB, the last one was VB6 (if i'm not mistaken) before the release of VB.Net)
2 - New knowledge and hands-on experience
3 - Course 2310 will prepare us for an exam (70305) (should we choose to take but have to pay) which is one of the three exams we'll have to pass in order to be a certified microsoft application developer (MCAD)

Cons:-
1 - Learn how to use the tool (VS.Net) but we wont be able to use it much in our place as we have not bought any yet. Without it, we'd need an alternative tool to develop .net apps.
2 - Will be a slow start for non-VB programmer (those who have java and php background will learn c# faster) --> again this is very subjective depending on each developer's capability
3 - Open source Mono does not support VB.Net but does support c#

Conclusion:-

The pros and cons stated above are solely my personal views. The cons are not meant to scare or discourage but simply serve as awareness.

Somehow I could not resist from sharing some of the useful information/experience from yesterday's Microsoft Innovation Day 2004 at Putrajaya Convention Center (PCC).

In the morning session, Bill Gates was the highlight when he turned up to deliver his keynote speech to more than 2000 IT Professionals, Developers and Students in Malaysia.  I was expecting something extraordinary in his speech but it turned out to be a normal diatribe. Well, who can blame Mr Gates? He is well known for his ideas/brains, not his speeches :)

Basically, he talked about the achievements of microsoft in the past 30 years including the evolution of microsoft operating systems from ms-dos to ms-windows.  The later part of his keynote was focused more on the topic of security which was actually (in my perspective) the sole focus of this convention, not to mention the security locks that bears Microsoft name as the door gifts. 

The morning session ended with a brief demo/preview on the latest windows codename longhorn, a complete revamp of its windows-folder/files concept.  Backed with the newly WinFS file system, the OS is much more robust, providing users with much2 more user friendly interface, and developers with a highly schematized XML based file structure.  In other words, each file is now being indexed like a record in your database.  What matter most now is what each file contains and not where the file is located.

The afternoon sessions were divided into 5 tracks for IT pros, devs and soft archtects.  I attended two sessions on security and one session on win interoperability with linux.  The first and second session were focused on how to write secure codes in general and the security best practices with ASP.NET.  These includes security measures that should be taken to guard applications again malicious user attacks such as SQL injection, cross side scripting (XSS), session hijacking etc.

And finally the last session introduced us to one of the microsoft concepts in gaining back some of the market shares that were lost to its open source competitors.  The speaker mentioned these 2 school of thoughts:
1. You subscribe to a platform (ie linux/unix) that will run all sort of technologies (j2ee,.net,etc).
2. You subscribe to a technology(ie .NET) that will run on all sorts of platform (windows, unix)
Microsoft is subscribing to the latter.  The session went on with the introduction of another product called Microsoft Windows Services for Unix v 3.5 which is available for free from
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp
With this product, unix is run on top of windows and you can use .NET web services to integrate your app with unix apps.

Audience : PHP Web Devs
Subject : Sending emails with PHP
Experience level : Devs should have at least used the PHP built-in mail() function

Problems encountered when using mail() on:
1. windows machine with apache installed - no problems found
2. linux/nix with apache installed - as long as no other mail servers are installed or being used in the same machine, the mail() function works fine
3. linux/nix with iplanet installed with several mail servers exist on the machine - mail() works fine for some time but will crash/stop sending emails after a few hours

Probable reasons/explanations:
In php.ini file, there is a section on mail where you can specifiy the smtp for windows and sendmail path for linux/unix. Luckily in windows, once you specify the smtp server in php.ini, emails will be relayed using this server. However, in unix/linux, you cant specify the smtp server but can only specify the path of the sendmail program, which normally resides in /usr/sbin. I believe sendmail does not have the capability to relay mail to an outside smtp server (as for tnb, it is mail.hq.tnb.com.my). But i'm not 100% sure on this since i heard that ads3 server has no problem in sending out emails. Thus, I came down to another conclusion which is other mail servers that exist on the same machine such as JavaMail, qmail etc can cause a conflict in sending emails.

Solution:
Simple, easy and efficient fix - use the opensource PhpMailer class that is available on sourceforge.net. It will bypass the sendmail program when you specify the method to send mail in ur code (which by right should be smtp). Plus, it is much much easier to send email from your application using this. Try it out yourself. Alternatively, you can try to understand how sendmail works or apply the latest patch for sendmail and pray that it works the next time your application sends emails :)

Note:
I might be wrong in some areas especially on how sendmail works since i only have a superficial knowledge on it. Feel free to share your knowledge if you have better understanding of sendmail

My two cents on PHP5 + MySQL5

This morning, got my PHP5 RC2 downloaded and installed on my win 98 box and hooked it up to apache 1.3.22. Then, the challenge was simply trying to connect to a test database in MySQL5 which i've installed yesterday. At first, it seemed impossible trying to connect to MySQL5 database using my old php4 codes but after few modifications and understanding how the libraries are placed in the system directory, everything works smoothly.

In fact, PHP5 RC2 does come with MySQLi extension and library which allow users to connect to MySQL ver 4.1 and above. MySQLi (notice the i) extension is actually the improved extension of the old MySQL. The extension is called ext/mysqli, with the 'i' standing for any one of: improved, interface, ingenious, incompatible or incomplete.

For more info, http://www.zend.com/php5/articles/php5-mysqli.php

Plus, I'm very impressed with the way PHP5 handles OO Interface. In the article, the author provides two sample codes of connection to a MySQL database, one the traditional way in php4 and one using the oo interface.

As for webservice, PHP5 comes with a PEAR package and php_soap extension which are good news to webservice users and developers.

I believe upgrading to PHP5 or MySQL5 or both should not be a problem although both technologies are not relatively stable at the moment.

I've been wondering since my college days when MySQL would come up with stored procedures and functions capabilities.

Microsoft had been pushing the stored procedures idea for years since its introduction of Microsoft SQL Server and most of the asp developers were married to this idea of using stored procedure in storing reusable sql queries instead of rewriting the queries everytime they would like to retrieve data from database.

I spent some time today playing around with the alpha version 5 of mysql and it's quite interesting to see this stored procedures and functions at work. At the moment, stored procedures and functions can be created and called only thru mysql command line. I do not think the current version of MySQL control center and also the latest phpMyAdmn 2.6.0 have added the user interface for database admin to create and use stored procedures and functions.

It's worth to take a look at these new MySQL new features since I believe it will change the way we develop our applications in the future. But bear in mind that stored procedures can be handy in terms of security and performance if not being used wisely.

Docs on Stored Proc
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Stored_Procedures.html
Intro to Stored Proc in MySql5:
http://builder.com.com/5100-6388-5178706.html?tag=sc

Attending the mobile developer's conference yesterday was an eye opener to some of us who would never even considering of using Microsoft's product before. To some who are anti-Microsoft and pro Open-source would surely have second thought if they had attended this conference.

I believe, the time has come for us to extend the scope of our applications to mobile devices such as PDAs, Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs and smartphones.

To develop mobile applications, Microsoft makes it easy for us with its new solution under the .Net Framework which is the introduction of the .Net Compact Framework. There is a need to understand the framework fully before one can begin to develop applications using Microsoft solutions.

The talks given by various reps from Microsofts indeed were very useful. The differences in developing applications for a Pocket PC and for a Smartphone were clearly outlined. Some of the demo shown includes the latest Visual Studio .NET 2005 which is not yet released in the market. Comparing with the current version, Visual Studio .NET 2003, this soon-to-be-released version has improved GUI for developing mobile applications including smartphones and pocket pc skins on the workspace and also the inclusion of emulators.

Developing web applications for mobile devices was made simpler and more efficient with the superiority of the ASP.NET Mobile Controls, soon to be marketed as ASP.NET "Whidbey" during the release of VS.NET 2005. With several clicks, drags and drops, an application can be built in no time.

One thing that strucked me the most was the fact that with the ease of developing applications using the tools provided by Microsft, I'm not surprised to see more developers in the future will not have to spend time writing the code from scratch. With VS.NET codes are automatically generated with clicks.

On my way home, I wondered about the balance between the cost and development-time of applications being built using Microsoft solutions and other open source projects. Would you prefer to cut down costs but only manage to complete a project in let say 4 months or to incur some costs but you can accomplish two or three projects within the same time frame?

Oo well, I might as well create another blog that is dedicated to my views on work related to web development. So here i come with the invention of the TINKERMAN II, your IT EVANGELIST.

Mann, i was so impressed with the word EVANGELIST the moment i first heard it. Where did it come from? I look up for that work in dictionary.com and here is the definition,

often Evangelist, Any one of the authors of the four New Testament gospel books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. or One who practices evangelism, especially a Protestant preacher or missionary.

So here i am, trying to spurt my ideas and opinions on some of the work, projects, and development on some of the web technologies out there.