From the Blogosphere

IDEs Belong in the Cloud

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:15:00 EST

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to play around with Ruby and naively thought that it would be easy to get started. I’d download Eclipse, and a few Ruby packages that weren’t shipped with MacOS, and then be off to the races. Fat chance. What I thought was going to a leisurely evening of writing sample Ruby apps turned out to be a marathon debugging session, wrestling with dependencies, error messages, and anything else that could have possible gone wrong — before I had the chance to write a lick of my own code. It reminded me of being a sysadmin, poring over log files and reading cryptic StackOverflow posts trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with my setup. It just should not be this hard for someone moderately technical to start coding up a simple app.

DocuSign’s Cloud API to Accelerate Integration with Force.com, Ruby, PHP

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:00:00 EDT

DocuSign Web Services Offers Developers Powerful New Tools to Easily Integrate DocuSign Electronic Signature Services with Leading Cloud Applications We’re excited about the release of the DocuSign Connect Application Programming Interface (API) for the DocuSign electronic signature platform. The new Connect API is designed to increased interoperability with key cloud platforms like Force.com, Ruby and [...]

Management Solutions for the Cloud

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:31:00 EDT

The role of cloud management solutions in the enterprise world is becoming increasingly important. With the interest and adoption of cloud in the enterprise steadily rising, solutions that help an organization to effectively harness, orchestrate, and govern their use of the cloud are floating to the top of the needs list. Developing and delivering solutions in this arena is no small task, and one made even tougher by enterprise user expectations and requirements. Just what are some of the enterprise requirements and expectations for cloud management solutions?

The Evolution In Enterprise Communications Continues

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:30:00 EDT

The VoiceCon 2010 event, now called, “Enterprise Connect!” is underway this week from Orlando, Florida; broadcasting keynotes from Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Siemens, which you can watch for free on VoiceCon TV. As I mentioned previously, in my last unified communications blog post, “Telepresence – The Face of the Cloud“, the [...]

DevCentral Top5 01/22/2010

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:15:00 EST

Wow! What a whirlwind it's been the past few weeks. Between holidays and vacation and people traveling out of town, it's been an absolute zoo around here. Though I've been out the past week or so there has been an avalanche of content. I've hemmed and hawed and finally managed to slim my picks down to just five, though there are at least a dozen awesome things worth checking out on DevCentral in the past week or so. So don't be shy, get out there and poke around for yourself. For now, though, here are my top 5 picks for the week:

GoGrid Customers Can Now Use New Relic’s RPM for Java/Ruby Web Apps

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST

New Relic announced that their RPM product supports GoGrid Cloud Hosting Infrastructure and is available for a limited time with preferential pricing. RPM is an on-demand tool that companies can use to optimize, monitor and troubleshoot their Java, Ruby and JRuby applications within a variety of environments, which now includes the GoGrid cloud. With New [...]

Botnets, Worms, and Open Clouds

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

Cloud computing environments are just as suited to illegitimate use as legitimate use. Do providers need a way to separate the chaff from the wheat to reassure enterprise-class customers that they’re doing everything they can to eliminate the hijacking of cloud computing resources for nefarious purposes? One of the negatives of being the technology darling du jour is that every misstep, problem, and outage is immediately jumped on and reported everywhere. Amazon is particularly susceptible to such coverage, being recognized as one of the leaders in public cloud computing. Last week Amazon suffered yet another outage, true, but more interesting may be the discovery that it had been infected by the Zeus bot, a password-stealing banking Trojan.

What Could You Do With Your Code in 20 Lines or Less?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:12:00 EDT

What could you do with your code in 20 Lines or Less? That's the question I ask (almost) every week for the devcentral community, and every week I go looking to find cool new examples that show just how flexible and powerful iRules can be without getting in over your head.

Well we made it to 30 editions of the 20LoL. Soon we’ll break 100 iRule examples that are under 21 lines of code each. Pretty neat stuff, if you ask me. This week is the hoolio show, it seems. The guy is just a monster in the forums, what can I say? I sure am glad he’s on our side. I’ve got three examples that I randomly pulled from the forums because I thought they were cool. Only later did I realize that he had penned them all. So big thanks yet again to Aaron and all his hard work to better the community.

Pre-loaded searches based on host name

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=86016&view=topic

This cool little example is a neat spin on a simple HTTP redirect. The basic idea is to redirect to a given search site and set the search parameter to be the original host name of the request. So I could request bobschickenshack.com and be redirected to a search for bobschickenshack on the search page of my choosing. Very cool idea, and darn easy to implement.

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 

    # Rewrite the host header to www.yahoo.com and the
    # uri to /search?q=$host where $host is the originally requested hostname 
    HTTP::header replace "www.yahoo.com" 
    HTTP::uri "/search?q=[HTTP::host]" 
 }

More fun with nested switch

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=85807&view=topic

I know we’ve covered switch before, but this is yet another good use of it and I really like the idea of selecting snatpools based on which server the request is going to end up going to. I trimmed this one down a little but only by removing a few of the possible snatpool options, all logic is the same, even though it’s just an excerpt of the overall solution provided.

 when LB_SELECTED { 
    switch [LB::server addr] { 
       222.35.42.126 { 
          switch [IP::client_addr] { 
             192.168.3.11 { snatpool snat_crt_test2 } 
             default { snatpool snat_crt_pool } 
          } 
       } 
       221.218.248.155 { 
          switch [IP::client_addr] { 
             192.168.3.11 { snatpool snat_uni_test2 } 
             default { snatpool snat_uni_pool } 
          } 
       } 
       default { snat automap } 
    } 
 }

Updating referrers

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&forumid=5&postid=85807&view=topic

Hoolio does a good job of not only pointing out the inherent problem with trying to replace referrer headers with hostnames from requests, but giving an option that works as desired even if it’s a little bit different direction than the OP was headed. This is a good example of in-line string replacement with string map, too, which is an often under used command that’s worth a look.

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 

    log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port]: New [HTTP::method] request to [HTTP::host][HTTP::uri]\ 
       with Referer [HTTP::header Referer]" 

    if {[HTTP::header exists "MyHeader"]} {  
       log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port]: Updating Referer to\ 
          [string map -nocase {http:// https://} [HTTP::header Referer]" 
       HTTP::header replace Referer "[string map -nocase {http:// https://} [HTTP::header Referer]" 
    } 
 } 
 when HTTP_REQUEST priority 501 { 
    log local0. "[IP::client_addr]:[TCP::client_port] (501): Current Referer [HTTP::header Referer]" 
 }

There you have it, 3 more iRules to show off just how much you can do in only 20 lines of code. Next time we’ll break past the 100 examples mark. See ya then.

Technorati Tags: 20 lines or less,20LoL,DevCentral,F5,iRules,Colin Walker

#Colin

The First Mobile Ruby

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:53:00 EDT

Our open source framework Rhodes contains the first implementation of Ruby for every major smartphone operating system: iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. The primary benefits of the Rhodes framework are: the productivity and portability enabled by writing interfaces in HTML once (and compiling to native smartphone apps), access to device capabilities from a [...]

Deploying Azure Hosted Services Should Be as Easy as Deploying a Heroku Application

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Recently a friend of mine showed me Heroku, an "instant Ruby platform". Basically what you can do with Heroku is build your Ruby application and the deployment to the remote Heroku site is not only brainless, painless, and simple, but it can be done entirely from the command line (which means it can be automated even further than it already is). But don't take my word for it, check out this screencast showing exactly how simple it is to build Ruby applications in the cloud using Heroku.

What Could You Do with Your Code in 20 Lines or Less?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:30:00 EDT

What could you do with your code in 20 Lines or Less? That's the question I ask (almost) every week for the devcentral community, and every week I go looking to find cool new examples that show just how flexible and powerful iRules can be without getting in over your head. Here are a few more cool iRules from the forums. This week I’ve included one of the simplest, shortest iRules to ever make the 20LoL. It just struck me as something quite useful that I’m willing to bet several people will look at and say “oh, that’s handy” despite the fact that it’s not complex or long. Keep the code coming.

David Eaves Talks About Vancouver’s Open Data Initiative

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:34:00 EDT

As more and more data become available as a matter of course, the examples set by organisations such as MySociety become increasingly attainable for us all. Other than ensuring that it is ‘open,’ do we need to be asking for more from those making data available? And once it’s there, will its use and scrutiny move beyond the enthusiasts and activists to encompass the population at large? David shares his views on these and other questions during our conversation. Back in May, ReadWriteWeb reported on a Motion put before legislators in the Canadian city of Vancouver. Duly passed, the Motion commits the city to three closely related ‘open’ agendas; the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media; the [...]

How to Generate Boxscores with Ruby from Live MLB Data

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:15:00 EDT

As an avid baseball fan, I’ve always been interested in the statistics that surround baseball. More so than in any other sport, baseball is a game ruled by statistics. In this post, I will describe a program that I wrote in the Ruby language to generate box scores for any Major Leage Baseball(MLB) game by using the live XML data provided by MLB. Ruby makes it easy to do using plain Ruby along with just a few libraries.

Walter Cronkite's IT Career Advice

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EDT

IT managers can look to an unlikely source for career inspiration: the late Walter Cronkite. The guiding principles that made Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America" can help impact your career in the world of high tech. The late Walter Cronkite as a role model for IT managers? At first glance, we might not see the connection between "the most trusted man in America" and high tech management. But if we pull back the layers of how Cronkite approached his job, there are solid day-to-day career lessons for those working in IT.

Security Cloud Assumptions

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EDT

After pushing my latest post, Securing the Cloud: Shared Hardware and the Data Plane, Hoff posted a series of excellent questions and responses to the post via Twitter. I thought responding via another blog post, so that his questions could be addressed alongside my last post, was the way to go. I’ve trimmed some of [...]

EuRuKo and Device Capabilities

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:24:00 EDT

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at the superb European Ruby Conference in Barcelona. It was fascinating seeing the enthusiasm of the audience for Ruby and the technologies presented. I also got to talk to several attendees about their own Ruby efforts. The most interesting chats that I had were reminders of how device [...]

In Defense of Joel Spolsky

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:15:00 EDT

Joel Spolsky doesn't need my help in defending himself. But since he's my favorite blogger and a person I highly respect, I feel obligated to speak up. Mr. Curt Monash has written an article implying that Joel overestimates his importance while not achieving that much since he was able to grow his company to "only" 25 people.

Java for Managers -- What Should They Know?

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:00:00 EDT

Last month, JavaBlackBelt completed a survey where developers said their teams would be 25% more productive if their management committed to skills management... which led me to consider: Which Java technologies do developers think that managers should understand better in order to make great decisions about skills management?

Red Hat Named "Platinum Sponsor" of Virtualization Conference & Expo

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

Why Do 'Cool Kids' Choose Ruby or PHP to Build Websites Instead of Java?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do 'cool kids' choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers, I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google. Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk just like me.

Ubuntu 1, Windows 0

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:00:00 EST

I installed Ubuntu on the Toshiba laptop. Ubuntu installed in 15 minutes - 49 for Windows XP and 125 for Windows Vista. Ubuntu's desktop came right up. I opened the pre-installed Firefox browser and found I could browse the Web immediately. Ubuntu installed a network adaptor for the Toshiba laptop. I shake my head at this Windows foolishness!