...dynamic pricing in this case refers to IBM, Compaq or Dell being able to change their prices to reflect the cost of the parts of a system. CPU and memory prices are notoriously volatile, and often change on a daily basis. This is just an attempt to give the customer the price closest to the actual cost of the machine on the day he ordered it.
IMHO, this isn't a bad thing. Prices on computer components generally (but not always) tend to fall. This just means that your system supplier isn't overcharging for parts because they haven't updated the price to reflect the new wholesale cost yet.
IIRC, the furor over Amazon's dynamic pricing scheme was mostly because Amazon wanted to offer different customers different prices for the same item.
Personally I wouldn't... PL/SQL is a "Programming Language", not a data access language like SQL is. If I want a programming language (ie: something I'm going to do real application development in) I'm going to use something with more features, and with a better lexical structure. For me, that means Java; C/C++ and VB are also contenders. PL/SQL just doesn't offer me anything.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected... SAP DB is a decent database but not world class. I know that SAP DB isn't going to take any market share from Oracle or DB2, but I was wondering if it might not be a bad choice for smaller projects (mid-level web sites, some online commerce, etc)
Unfortunately for me (having never used SAP) 5-6000 SAPS doesn't mean much... I don't suppose you could give a rough estimate about how many transactions per second that would equate to, could you?
I find it interesting that you'd choose other free DBs (MySQL, PostgreSQL being the 2 I know of) over SAP DB. Can you explain this statement further?
Argh... there's a link to "download software" right on that page... that's no better than a plugin or a Java applet... you still have to download a program, configure it, work out incompatibilites, etc.
The whole point of saying "no plugin required" is that you provide some sort of functionality to the user without the user having to do anything extra in order to get it; it's a totally painless and universal process. Unfortunately, that limits you to some very basic technologies; HTML, animated GIFs, maybe JavaScript. Anything else needs user involvement to some degree.
In short . . . SAPDB kicks ass feature wise on all the other Open Source stuff we have played with.
Yeah, I guessed that from viewing their web site, and your post confirms it... SAP DB seems to have all the features down. However, what I personally am most concerned with is it's reliability and scalability. Thusfar, all I've heard on/. is that it's usually swapped out of SAP R3 installations for Oracle or DB2... not all that encouraging. However, even if it's only as good as MS SQL Server than I think it could become a real player in the DB market. After all, it's free...
The problem with SAPDB is the same as with all Opensource DB's. No affordable, robust,4GL, dbcentric development environment.
I'll step up on my soapbox here for a second... do you really need a 4GL DB-centric development environment for your DBMS? Personally, I prefer to do my development In something totally removed from the database (Java w/JDBC in my case). When I build apps, I want 100% of my business logic to reside within the application layer. Simple SQL scripts should be sufficient to handle most DB maintenance. Please let me know what your opinions are.:-)
Hmm, I wasn't aware of any IE JDK 1.1 update. Are you referring to the MS JVM update? It's my understanding that that's just an update to the JVM implementation (fallout from the MS/Sun war on Java), but it does not upgrade to the 1.1 JDK. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm not actually trying to bash IE... I actually like IE's JVM better than I like Netscape's (it's far more stable). But it is old, and it won't be updated, so you have to restrict yourself whenever you decide to develop for it.
I'm not bashing Java either.. I develop in (server-side) Java pretty much exclusively now. What I am bashing are people who claim that their Java-based applets are intrinsically better than things like Flash or QuickTime because it "does not use plugins". That is simply misleading.
That's exactly my point... you can't simply "run any applet" because the JVMs installed in today's browsers aren't up to par.
- You can't run any applet that's written for JDK 1.1 or later (current version will be 1.4 soon) in any version of IE or Netscape before 6.0
- Bugs in the JVMs (especially the Netscape JVMs) mean that applets frequently crash, or produce different results than what you would expect.
To get around this, you have to install your own JVM, which means the user is doing as much work as if they installed a regular plugin in the first place.
I've realized what a win-win situation this is for SAP.
Everyone, raise your hand if you've purchased a license for SAP DB as a standalone product, without the (still commercial) SAP core product (SAP R/3).
Anyone? I thought not. So OSSing SAP DB isn't costing SAP any (or maybe very little) lost license fees.
Now since the DB is OSS, it has the potential to have a lot of community development work devoted to it. This work is done for free of course.
Theres also some good publicity for SAP (at the very least a post on/.). This could spin off into more sales of SAP R/3. But if it doesn't, then there's really nothing lost.
If the product takes off, SAP could start offering commercial support (a la Red Hat & IBM for Linux).
Best of all, businesses now have the option of using a free enterprise-worthy DBMS (look out SQL Server). How much would you like to bet that SAP starts advertising how well their SAP R/3 product integrates with their own database?
After a quick check of the site I've come to believe that the product that they're OSSing is the same thing that they use in their SAP R/3 product (thats right, the same product that costs thousands of dollars and is used all over the world).
Does anyone here have any experience with SAP DB, and can comment on its quality/ scalability/ performance? I'm assuming that they're all reasonably good (at least as good as SQL Server, maybe more along the lines of DB2 and Oracle?)
This could be the big break that OSS DBs were looking for; now there's products for both the low and high end of the RDB market.
It bothers me that things like this are being promoted as "no plugins required" because they use Java.
A Java applet is effectively the same as a plugin such as Flash or QuickTime. You still have to download the player program. In Java it's distributed as CLASS files (often packaged in a Java ARchive); with "normal" plugins it's an executable file.
You still have to worry about program size (how long will it take to download over a slow connection), versioning (what if the user has an old version of the player, or what if a newer version won't play older content), and security (what if the user disables, refuses to download, or does not grant the proper access rights to the program).
There are some advantages to using Java:
The applets are generally smaller and quicker to download (since a large part of the class library already exists on the user's system.
You can develop a single program that will work on all platforms (see note below)
Installation of the applet is generally transparent to the user, but this is mostly because the applets are using the old Java 1.0 security model that doesn't require any user intervention, and thus poses great restrictions on what the applet can do.
However, because of the horrible implementations of JVMs in the major browsers, point #2 is pretty much moot; you can't be sure that your applet will work correctly in every browser/platform combination without extensive testing.
Add to that the fact that the most popular browser family in the world (Internet Explorer) runs a Java version that is horribly out-of-date, and will never upgrade. So you're always stuck using the oldest and ugliest class library; at least you can hope for a recent version when using Flash.
You can get around all of these problems by requiring that the user have Sun's Java Plugin (a browser plugin that has the most recent JVM, and a standardized implementation). Of course, this defeats the entire purpose of not requiring plugins to view the content.
So please, all web developers, stop saying that your software doesn't require a plugin. You're only right on a technicality; the net effect to your users is still the same.
They're buying one of their few remaining competitors. Who's left in the high-end DB market now? Oracle obviously, Microsoft and Sybase maybe. Beyond that?
The DB market just shrunk slightly today. IBM might be pulling a Microsoft here -- buy out your competition.
To me, this thing sounds a lot like a Zaplet for the web.
That is: probably well-intentioned, kind of a neat idea (for about 30 seconds), but totally proprietary and not really noticed by anyone but the originator.
(BTW, Zaplets are little e-mail messages that were supposed to be interactive; they used some combination of e-mail attachments, HTML forms, and server-side Java. Never heard of them? Don't worry, you're not missing anything:-P )
That's why we should give up on html and java/javascript and return to a language that everyone already has on his computer: Basic.
I don't really understand this comment. First of all, who says that everyone has Basic on his computer? Similarly, what version of Basic are we referring to here? GW-BASIC? QuickBasic? VB? VBA? VBScript?
Secondly, the majority of the browsers in use (ie: IE, versions 4 and up) already support VBScript embedded into HTML documents. However, pretty much no one writes VBScript into web pages. Why? No other browser (Netscape, old versions of IE) supports it, yet some do support JavaScript. JavaScript is supported by more platforms, thus JavaScript is more popular.
Thirdly, I think that most of the problems with JavaScript are not because JavaScript is a poor language (and thus replacing it with another language would improve the situation). Most of the problems I have with it are due to incompatibilities in different browsers, bugs in a browser's implementation (more prevalent in earlier versions), and poor/buggy/untested code written by inexperienced or lazy developers. None of these problems are specific to JavaScript, and each could happen just as easily with Basic, Curl, or anything else.
While a good standard language/ architecture for client-side web programming would be nice, I don't think one will appear unless the W3C puts its full weight behind one and the browser developers adhere to it fully.
HBO is what you're looking for. There's never any ads during the programs. The only ads you see are between programs (as one movie leads into the next, for example), and they're always for other HBO programs... no commercials for cars, soft drinks, mutual funds, etc.
In addition to being largely commercial-free, HBO programs are generally better (IMHO) than most of the crap you find on broadcast or regular cable TV. The monthly rates are reasonable too.
Exactly! They generally have no idea what is effective advertising. Which is why I'm intrigued by this new concept of user-driven advertising.
I use an ad filter, not because I disagree with advertising on a fundamental level, but because there are so many abusive (ie: large, pop-up, animated, etc) ads out there, and most ads are for things I have no interest in. But now I'm missing out on some things I might be genuinely interested in (ex: deals on hardware, games, etc). And some company, which I may come to know and love has just lost a potential customer.
Now, let me tell the ad clearinghouse company what ads I want see (computer related, no animation, nothing larger than X by Y pixels, etc), and I'll turn off my filtering. If someone comes up with a good ad or offers a good deal, I'll click through and let them know that they're on the right track.
Of course, occasionally I'll be fed an ad that doesn't conform to my preferences. This is not a bad thing, since I might want to expand my horizons once something new comes out. If I don't like the ad, I can send feedback to the ad serving company and the company that's doing the promotion... then they can stop serving me their ad (since I'm having a negative reaction to it) and go on their merry way.
I think that this such a good idea... it could really turn Internet advertising around...
People here seem to be giving an awful lot of flack to the spelling and grammar of many online journalers. Bear in mind that free services such as diary-x attract a very young, mostly non-net savvy user base...
Yeah, after all, net-savvy users (like the ones who post to Slashdot) are the model of perfect spelling and grammer.:-)
As one doctor succinctly put it, 'Young people today are becoming stupid.'
Please, everyone, say it with me: The ability to remember facts does not equal the ability to think, to solve problems, etc. The trait being discussed was memory. If the doctor had said 'Young people today are becoming scatterbrained' that would be one thing, but this is just silly.
We can produce an environment almost completely without bacteria/parasites/disease: (space, for instance)
Wow, I didn't know we produced space!:-)
In essence, the point is just that while other animals may exploit humans, we choose to let them exploit us, whereas they have no choice as to whether or not we exploit them.
Check out the Center for Disease Control. Depending on what you mean by "exploited", one could easily argue that we choose not to be exploited by bacteria or viruses, but are slowly losing that fight, despite all our efforts.
Think of it this way: if we founded a colony on Mars, and that colony brought no bacteria/domesticated animals, well, they wouldn't be able to exploit us then, would they?
The trouble is that we humans are so infested with all sorts of bacteria that we can't go anywhere without bringing them along. And as for domesticated animals... you'll probably get pretty hungry that way, since we would have nothing to eat (in your arguement, there's really no reason why you shouldn't lump plants into the same category as animals). We are dependant upon other life forms for food, just as a lot of other species are.
Simply put: 'dominion' is actually somewhat the correct word for it. Humans are now capable of doing whatever we want to any living species on the planet.
Last I heard, there was still no cure for the HIV virus, and the mosquito has been doing quite well even though it's in our best interest to get rid of it.
Plus, if we ever do migrate off-planet, then we have the potential to become the longest-lived animal species, which definitely qualifies as the most successful by Nature's definition.
Uhh, longest-lived how? Blue-green algae has been pretty much unchanged for billions of years. Sharks (a complex and intelligent animal) have had the same general biology for millions. Homo Sapiens have existed for a tens of thousands; we've had civilization (the first stage of environmental control) for a few thousand, and any real impact on the world as a whole for a few hundred. We've got a lot of catching up to do in order to become the longest-lived species.
Just so that I'm not making a colossal mistake here, were you trying to get a +1 Funny for your post?
However, unlike people in other countries, it's quite far/expensive for us to travel someplace where English is not the primary language.
That's more a function of your region rather than your country. There's lots of places within the US where English is not the mother tounge of most of the residents. Miami is the example that's closest to me; I'd wager that theres plenty of areas near Houston where Spanish is the preferred language. Also note the Asian districts in various cities (Chinatown in San Francisco), or the French Quarter in New Orleans.
There's plenty of languages in the US, you just need to know where to look.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, this isn't a bad thing. Prices on computer components generally (but not always) tend to fall. This just means that your system supplier isn't overcharging for parts because they haven't updated the price to reflect the new wholesale cost yet.
IIRC, the furor over Amazon's dynamic pricing scheme was mostly because Amazon wanted to offer different customers different prices for the same item.
Easy... they're all living Beyond the Rim.
Sorry, some lame Babylon 5 humor. I'll shut up now.
Personally I wouldn't... PL/SQL is a "Programming Language", not a data access language like SQL is. If I want a programming language (ie: something I'm going to do real application development in) I'm going to use something with more features, and with a better lexical structure. For me, that means Java; C/C++ and VB are also contenders. PL/SQL just doesn't offer me anything.
Unfortunately for me (having never used SAP) 5-6000 SAPS doesn't mean much... I don't suppose you could give a rough estimate about how many transactions per second that would equate to, could you?
I find it interesting that you'd choose other free DBs (MySQL, PostgreSQL being the 2 I know of) over SAP DB. Can you explain this statement further?
Thanks for all your insights.:-)
The whole point of saying "no plugin required" is that you provide some sort of functionality to the user without the user having to do anything extra in order to get it; it's a totally painless and universal process. Unfortunately, that limits you to some very basic technologies; HTML, animated GIFs, maybe JavaScript. Anything else needs user involvement to some degree.
Yeah, I guessed that from viewing their web site, and your post confirms it... SAP DB seems to have all the features down. However, what I personally am most concerned with is it's reliability and scalability. Thusfar, all I've heard on /. is that it's usually swapped out of SAP R3 installations for Oracle or DB2... not all that encouraging. However, even if it's only as good as MS SQL Server than I think it could become a real player in the DB market. After all, it's free...
The problem with SAPDB is the same as with all Opensource DB's. No affordable, robust ,4GL, dbcentric development environment.
I'll step up on my soapbox here for a second... do you really need a 4GL DB-centric development environment for your DBMS? Personally, I prefer to do my development In something totally removed from the database (Java w/JDBC in my case). When I build apps, I want 100% of my business logic to reside within the application layer. Simple SQL scripts should be sufficient to handle most DB maintenance. Please let me know what your opinions are. :-)
I'm not actually trying to bash IE... I actually like IE's JVM better than I like Netscape's (it's far more stable). But it is old, and it won't be updated, so you have to restrict yourself whenever you decide to develop for it.
I'm not bashing Java either.. I develop in (server-side) Java pretty much exclusively now. What I am bashing are people who claim that their Java-based applets are intrinsically better than things like Flash or QuickTime because it "does not use plugins". That is simply misleading.
- You can't run any applet that's written for JDK 1.1 or later (current version will be 1.4 soon) in any version of IE or Netscape before 6.0
- Bugs in the JVMs (especially the Netscape JVMs) mean that applets frequently crash, or produce different results than what you would expect.
To get around this, you have to install your own JVM, which means the user is doing as much work as if they installed a regular plugin in the first place.
Everyone, raise your hand if you've purchased a license for SAP DB as a standalone product, without the (still commercial) SAP core product (SAP R/3).
Anyone? I thought not. So OSSing SAP DB isn't costing SAP any (or maybe very little) lost license fees.
Now since the DB is OSS, it has the potential to have a lot of community development work devoted to it. This work is done for free of course.
Theres also some good publicity for SAP (at the very least a post on /.). This could spin off into more sales of SAP R/3. But if it doesn't, then there's really nothing lost.
If the product takes off, SAP could start offering commercial support (a la Red Hat & IBM for Linux).
Best of all, businesses now have the option of using a free enterprise-worthy DBMS (look out SQL Server). How much would you like to bet that SAP starts advertising how well their SAP R/3 product integrates with their own database?
Does anyone here have any experience with SAP DB, and can comment on its quality/ scalability/ performance? I'm assuming that they're all reasonably good (at least as good as SQL Server, maybe more along the lines of DB2 and Oracle?)
This could be the big break that OSS DBs were looking for; now there's products for both the low and high end of the RDB market.
A Java applet is effectively the same as a plugin such as Flash or QuickTime. You still have to download the player program. In Java it's distributed as CLASS files (often packaged in a Java ARchive); with "normal" plugins it's an executable file.
You still have to worry about program size (how long will it take to download over a slow connection), versioning (what if the user has an old version of the player, or what if a newer version won't play older content), and security (what if the user disables, refuses to download, or does not grant the proper access rights to the program).
There are some advantages to using Java:
- The applets are generally smaller and quicker to download (since a large part of the class library already exists on the user's system.
- You can develop a single program that will work on all platforms (see note below)
- Installation of the applet is generally transparent to the user, but this is mostly because the applets are using the old Java 1.0 security model that doesn't require any user intervention, and thus poses great restrictions on what the applet can do.
However, because of the horrible implementations of JVMs in the major browsers, point #2 is pretty much moot; you can't be sure that your applet will work correctly in every browser/platform combination without extensive testing.Add to that the fact that the most popular browser family in the world (Internet Explorer) runs a Java version that is horribly out-of-date, and will never upgrade. So you're always stuck using the oldest and ugliest class library; at least you can hope for a recent version when using Flash.
You can get around all of these problems by requiring that the user have Sun's Java Plugin (a browser plugin that has the most recent JVM, and a standardized implementation). Of course, this defeats the entire purpose of not requiring plugins to view the content.
So please, all web developers, stop saying that your software doesn't require a plugin. You're only right on a technicality; the net effect to your users is still the same.
Very true... although it seems like IBM has been better over the last few years.
The DB market just shrunk slightly today. IBM might be pulling a Microsoft here -- buy out your competition.
That is: probably well-intentioned, kind of a neat idea (for about 30 seconds), but totally proprietary and not really noticed by anyone but the originator.
(BTW, Zaplets are little e-mail messages that were supposed to be interactive; they used some combination of e-mail attachments, HTML forms, and server-side Java. Never heard of them? Don't worry, you're not missing anything :-P )
I don't really understand this comment. First of all, who says that everyone has Basic on his computer? Similarly, what version of Basic are we referring to here? GW-BASIC? QuickBasic? VB? VBA? VBScript?
Secondly, the majority of the browsers in use (ie: IE, versions 4 and up) already support VBScript embedded into HTML documents. However, pretty much no one writes VBScript into web pages. Why? No other browser (Netscape, old versions of IE) supports it, yet some do support JavaScript. JavaScript is supported by more platforms, thus JavaScript is more popular.
Thirdly, I think that most of the problems with JavaScript are not because JavaScript is a poor language (and thus replacing it with another language would improve the situation). Most of the problems I have with it are due to incompatibilities in different browsers, bugs in a browser's implementation (more prevalent in earlier versions), and poor/buggy/untested code written by inexperienced or lazy developers. None of these problems are specific to JavaScript, and each could happen just as easily with Basic, Curl, or anything else.
While a good standard language/ architecture for client-side web programming would be nice, I don't think one will appear unless the W3C puts its full weight behind one and the browser developers adhere to it fully.
True, but you paid for the Windows license; are you also OK with paying for the cost of the censorware?
Could I write some (free) software that only blocked Texas government sites, then offer it to computer resellers as their solution to this bill?
Not to mention Compaq (Houston). IBM also has a pretty major presence in Texas, although I believe that's more for servers.
In addition to being largely commercial-free, HBO programs are generally better (IMHO) than most of the crap you find on broadcast or regular cable TV. The monthly rates are reasonable too.
Exactly! They generally have no idea what is effective advertising. Which is why I'm intrigued by this new concept of user-driven advertising.
I use an ad filter, not because I disagree with advertising on a fundamental level, but because there are so many abusive (ie: large, pop-up, animated, etc) ads out there, and most ads are for things I have no interest in. But now I'm missing out on some things I might be genuinely interested in (ex: deals on hardware, games, etc). And some company, which I may come to know and love has just lost a potential customer.
Now, let me tell the ad clearinghouse company what ads I want see (computer related, no animation, nothing larger than X by Y pixels, etc), and I'll turn off my filtering. If someone comes up with a good ad or offers a good deal, I'll click through and let them know that they're on the right track.
Of course, occasionally I'll be fed an ad that doesn't conform to my preferences. This is not a bad thing, since I might want to expand my horizons once something new comes out. If I don't like the ad, I can send feedback to the ad serving company and the company that's doing the promotion... then they can stop serving me their ad (since I'm having a negative reaction to it) and go on their merry way.
I think that this such a good idea... it could really turn Internet advertising around...
Yeah, after all, net-savvy users (like the ones who post to Slashdot) are the model of perfect spelling and grammer. :-)
Please, everyone, say it with me: The ability to remember facts does not equal the ability to think, to solve problems, etc. The trait being discussed was memory. If the doctor had said 'Young people today are becoming scatterbrained' that would be one thing, but this is just silly.
Sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine.
We can produce an environment almost completely without bacteria/parasites/disease: (space, for instance)
Wow, I didn't know we produced space! :-)
In essence, the point is just that while other animals may exploit humans, we choose to let them exploit us, whereas they have no choice as to whether or not we exploit them.
Check out the Center for Disease Control. Depending on what you mean by "exploited", one could easily argue that we choose not to be exploited by bacteria or viruses, but are slowly losing that fight, despite all our efforts.
Think of it this way: if we founded a colony on Mars, and that colony brought no bacteria/domesticated animals, well, they wouldn't be able to exploit us then, would they?
The trouble is that we humans are so infested with all sorts of bacteria that we can't go anywhere without bringing them along. And as for domesticated animals... you'll probably get pretty hungry that way, since we would have nothing to eat (in your arguement, there's really no reason why you shouldn't lump plants into the same category as animals). We are dependant upon other life forms for food, just as a lot of other species are.
Simply put: 'dominion' is actually somewhat the correct word for it. Humans are now capable of doing whatever we want to any living species on the planet.
Last I heard, there was still no cure for the HIV virus, and the mosquito has been doing quite well even though it's in our best interest to get rid of it.
Plus, if we ever do migrate off-planet, then we have the potential to become the longest-lived animal species, which definitely qualifies as the most successful by Nature's definition.
Uhh, longest-lived how? Blue-green algae has been pretty much unchanged for billions of years. Sharks (a complex and intelligent animal) have had the same general biology for millions. Homo Sapiens have existed for a tens of thousands; we've had civilization (the first stage of environmental control) for a few thousand, and any real impact on the world as a whole for a few hundred. We've got a lot of catching up to do in order to become the longest-lived species.
Just so that I'm not making a colossal mistake here, were you trying to get a +1 Funny for your post?
That's more a function of your region rather than your country. There's lots of places within the US where English is not the mother tounge of most of the residents. Miami is the example that's closest to me; I'd wager that theres plenty of areas near Houston where Spanish is the preferred language. Also note the Asian districts in various cities (Chinatown in San Francisco), or the French Quarter in New Orleans.
There's plenty of languages in the US, you just need to know where to look.
And here I thought it was an operating system!