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Scott, thank you so much for your conference
report. As a long time supporter of Witango and its predecessors I was very
sorry to not be able to make the event. I too would have loved to put faces on
the names that I have seen on the list for years, but most of all you have shed
some clarity on the future of Witango and it finally looks bright. I look
forward to the next releases!
Cheers.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 2:41
PM
Subject: Witango-Talk: My Conference
Recap - Part 1
Hello Everyone,
I have a lot of topics I want to cover,
and without wanting to write a whole
novel in one email and expedite
getting some information to you, I'll have
to break this into at least
three parts - with the other pieces following
over the next few
days.
By way of a short disclaimer - the following is my interpretation
of what
un-folded at the Conference. I may have not remembered or not
understood
some of the facts precisely, but I hope I get the message across
- Witango's
future is assured!
I apologize to the list - I had
promised before the Conference to make an
effort to post information as
readily as possible, but of course that didn't
happen. Let me tell you
why.
First off, the Conference was 3 days ago but I only just got home
because I
took an Amtrak Train all the way from Pittsburgh, home to
Vancouver BC
(about
3,000 miles). And I'll tell you I slept nearly the
whole way home I was so
exhausted from the Conference. So I apologize again
to the list for taking
so long to fire this off.
I realize of
course, Phil and Sophie will be releasing some of this
information
'officially' once they get home, but I thought an end
user/developer's
point of view might be helpful.
The moment we began lining up for
Registration on Monday afternoon - the fun
began. Putting faces to names
started in the line-up and quickly became one
of the most worth while
'events' of the Conference. How long have many of us
chatted together on
this list - but never met? How many times in your life
do you get to find a
long-lost cousin and discover an instant friendship in
your kinship? I can
only speak for myself of course - but I know I went many
times over my
allotment in life during the Conference.
Now imagine all these cousins
together in one big room, not only talking
about Witango, but our lives,
our families, the long roads of our careers,
our travels, our businesses,
our futures and you can easily imagine how time
escaped us all and most of
where negligent in getting information out to the
rest of our extended
family, you. Please forgive us.
We covered an amazing amount of ground
in 2 and half days and I for one only
slept about 9 hours during this
time.
So, first off - Phil and
Sophie.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Again, I can't speak for
anyone else, but my picture of them was night and
day compared to the view
I had formed of them from List - to the personal
impression they left me
with once I finally got to know them a little at the
Conference. Prior to
the Conference, I simply pictured Phil and Sophie as
two business people
who had formed a large, successful Web-development
Company. And that to
them, Business was the name of the game.
But when I left the
Conference, I realized Phil and Sophie are just people.
Very clever people
- but people none-the-less. They are funny, personable,
warm, sensitive,
intelligent and even a little shy. In bits and pieces, they
shared with us
what they thought they were getting when they purchased
Witango - but what
they got was something completely different in many, many
ways.
They
thought they bought a product (Tango), but what they got was a
community.
And they demonstrated to me, that they've taken this sincerely to
heart in
every way.
In addition to being great people, Phil and Sophie have
vision. And they
have relied heavily on this community to form this vision
- and will
continue to do so for as long as it takes to achieve this
vision. So here
are some of the highlights in my own words.
The
Witango Team
"""""""""""""""""""""""
In addition to Phil and Sophie, the
Team, includes a very important
individual: Andre Morozov.
He worked
for Everyware back at the beginning of Tango and was involved in
many
critical turning points in it's evolution. He is now the Chief
Architect of
the Server Engine for both v5.0 and v6.0. His company is called
Stone Steps
( http://www.stonesteps.ca
).
Obviously I was very impressed with Andre's programming abilities,
and he
painstakingly walked us all through many intimate details of the
Witango
Source Code. But what I was most impressed about Andre was with a
subject
that often does not receive enough credit - bug fixes! Andre
demonstrated
that he is a dedicated sole that wants more than anything to
"get it right".
Not only has Andre, and the rest of the Team been working
on new features -
but they are literally rebuilding and fixing very large
chunks of the Source
Code in an effort to make expansion easier and to
optimize performance. This
is one of the reasons why it has taken longer
than expected to release a
branded version of the Witango Server - but more
on that later.
Pre-emptive
Threading
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
And on the subject of
optimization, we have Pre-emptive Threading. Andre
walked us through the
current Witango model of Co-operative Threading and
how eventually Witango
performance can plateau and encounter a bottle-neck
under heavy loads.
Pre-emptive Threading utilizes true multi-tasking methods
to sustain heavy
loads and even increase performance. From what I recall he
said, at the
current level of development for v5.0, Andre says we are
looking at about 4
times increase in performance from normal TAF files.
Interacting with a
Database can slow this down obviously - but we are still
looking at 2 to 3
times a performance increase from what we have now. This
is at the current
state of development - this figure may increase once v5.0
nears
completion.
Debugging
"""""""""""""
V5.0 Includes new debugging
features. In addition to the normal Error
identifying the Action Position -
error messages can now extract the line of
code and nested Metatag where
the error occurred by way of a Meta Stack
Trace, which is a collection of
cascaded errors caused by the first error.
This array will be available to
those of us who write our own custom error
messages as well. Andre is
working towards identifying the actual line
number of the error and we may
see line numbering in our Results HTML
windows for v5.0 (or v6.0 at the
latest, as well a possible new debugging
window in the Editor v
6.0).
New Variable Scope
"""""""""""""""""""""""""
In an effort
to strengthen the Witango programming model and to aid
initial
understanding and training of Witango v5.0, a new Scope was
introduced to
replace Local Scope - it's called Request Scope. Obviously
v5.0 will be
backward compatible with Local Scope, but Request Scope is
more appropriate
and descriptive than Local, when you compare Witango
against other
languages. In other programming languages, Local Scope
actually means
something quite different than the way we understand
it.
I think this helps to position Witango more seriously in the world
market of
other serious languages.
New <@DEFINE>
Metatag
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
To further expand on the
topic of the Witango programming model - v5.0 has
the <@DEFINE>
Metatag. Other languages require or allow you pre-define
variables and
their types. This can be an important aid during development
and
trouble-shooting to ensure, for example, that a variable that should be
an
Array doesn't accidentally get overwritten as a single value, by causing
an
error. Use of this Metatag will be optional I understand.
The
importance of this becomes more apparent when your Witango code is
compiled
as Java J2EE or .NET :-)
New <@EMAIL>
Metatags
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Andre showed us how Witango
v5.0 can now Retrieve IMAP4 and POP3 mail and
provide better supported SMTP
mail sending.
Basic support for attachments will be in v5.0, with full
support following
shortly after.
WISP
"""""""
The Witango
Server Protocol. From what I gather, Phil and Andre identified
early on
that they wanted to introduce many new features and capabilities
of
Witango. But instead of writing add-on modules to the core of the
Engine
code for every one - they've wrapped the inner heart of the
Application
Server engine with an API that will allow external 'Clients'
(mainly
web-server plugins, such as used by IIS and Apache) to cleanly
communicate
with Witango using a common interface.
In v5.0, this API
will be made publicly available. The most obvious benefit
will be the speed
at which Witango Team will be able to crank out compatible
versions of the
Witango Plugin for just about any version of Web-server on
the
market.
The other obvious benefit, will be to allow independent
developers to write
their own custom applications that can communicate
directly with the Witango
Engine.
One example would be Web-Services.
Web-services (XML style or otherwise)
don't actually require a Web-server
to facilitate it's functionality.
Although you often find Web-servers and
Web-Services tied together, it's
often only because Web-servers are a
pre-made 'Client' for the communication
interface for the Service. But if
you could by-pass the Web-server (often
the slowest piece of linkage in
your system) - then you could deliver a more
efficient Service by building
your own optimized 'Client' with Witango as
the heart of Service and your
Code as the Brains. Obviously knowledge of
Java or C++ are
recommend.
I understand some code examples for building your own WISP
interface will be
available in v5.0
Custom
Tags
""""""""""""""""
Phil has put a vast amount of work into cleaning
up how Witango Custom Tags
are implemented. Not only to make your jobs
easier, but because Phil would
like you to write Custom Tags for all of us
and submit them for inclusion in
other upcoming versions of Witango. Your
Tags would not be an add-on piece
of code - but hard coded at the Source
Code level as a permanent addition to
Witango.
His recommendations,
if you would like to contribute, are to make sure you
submit your Custom
Tag code with a unique name. Final naming of the Tag will
be done by the
Witango Team, but prefix your submission with your name or
initials and use
an underscore somewhere in it.
Example:
<@SCADILLAC_BROWSERSNIFFER>
This is because the final
release of your Tag may become a compilation of
other submissions or
features and the new Tag, example <@BROWSER>, then
doesn't step on
top of your current functionality. This is because hard
coded Witango
Metatags are always executed before any Custom Tags that
happen to have the
same name.
Part 1
"""""""
So, this is my quick wrap-up of
some of the v5.0 Server.
Part 2 will be more on the v5.0 Server and the
Editor (including sharable,
searchable Code Snippets, Metatag Attribute
helper and integrated Help
files)
Part 3 is about writing and
compiling Witango v6.0 Code for Java J2EE and
.NET. As well as my thoughts
on Marketing Witango to the world.
Again, Phil and Sophie are great
people. One of the attributes I admire
about them is how closely they've
kept their work to themselves. Yes, we've
all been starved for information
for many, many months and many of us feel
they owe us something - your
words and posts have not gone unnoticed, but
Phil and Sophie are just not
the kind of people that want to talk about
features or plans until they
know they are obtainable.
What does that mean? Once Phil and Sophie say
something; then you can take
it as gospel!
And at the first ever
Witango Developers Conference - they sang a resounding
chores, of which
I've only scratched the surface. On top of that, I also
sensed there is
more they wanted to tell us - but it'll have to wait until
they are
ready.
Also, Thank you to our Host Razzak Memon for supporting
Witango
whole-heartily and for chewing us out (more on that later) :-) and
to all
the other Presenters that blew me away with their efforts and
creativity and
for sharing their experience and insight into business and
the Software
Industry.
And also Thank you to Everyone (present at
the Conference and not able to
attend) that made me feel personally, that
all my efforts to support this
community have been completely worth-while.
I will continue to
strive to honor your praise and
thoughtfulness.
Thank you.
Cheers for now, and I hope this makes
up for my tardiness.
Scott Cadillac
http://xml-extra.net
VP, Research and
Development
Plus International Corp.
604-460-1843
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.plusinternational.com
Vancouver,
BC, Canada
Does your company have an Enterprise Information Portal?
Check out Salsa at
www.plusinternational.com/flash/salsa.htm
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