2009/07/08
TheRegister: PostgreSQL trumpets 8.4 release
by Timothy Prickett Morgan
The open source project behind the PostgreSQL relational database is blowing its nose trumpeting the availability of PostgresSQL 8.4, a rev that includes 293 new or improved features that make the database easier to administer and more useful to programmers and end users.
The new code, which is available for download here, was set to launch on June 29, but had a show-stopper bug that needed to be fixed at the last minute, according to Josh Berkus, a member of the PostgreSQL core development team. The bug related to the standby database failover feature of PostgreSQL that could have potentially caused some data loss for certain setups, so Berkus held up the release for two days to test a bug fix. (The bug fix worked, and if it didn't, then PostgreSQL 8.4 would still not be available).
While there are a plethora of features that database administrators and programmers are going to eat up, the big enhancements in PostgreSQL 8.4 include the ability to do a parallel database restore (which can speed up database recovery time by a factor of two to eight, depending on the underlying iron and how you set it up) and the ability to do "in-place" upgrades from PostgreSQL 8.3 to 8.4 "without extensive downtime." (It would be best, of course, to have no downtime. That's why companies that can't take downtime have high availability clustering of their database servers). This pg_Migrator tool is still in beta, by the way.
PostgreSQL also includes a new set of query monitoring tools, to allow administrators to monitor end users and see what queries they are launching at the database. (Some users, particularly in marketing, are fond of launching complex queries during peak transaction loads and inadvertently cripple system throughput with their crafty questions).
The updated database also includes ANSI SQL2003 features such as recursive joins, windowing functions, and common table expressions, features which allow end users to pose different kinds of questions of their databases that was possible with PostgreSQL 8.3 and earlier releases. There are enhancements to stored procedures, such as default parameters and variadic parameters, that the project says makes database programming more simple and compact as well.
The blow-by-blow feature list for PostgreSQL 8.4 is in the release notes, and the project has put together a feature matrix so you can see the evolution of PostgreSQL from the 7.4 though 8.4 releases. PostgreSQL 8.4 comes in pre-compiled binaries for FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris (the x64 version of Solaris 10 only), and Windows operating systems. If you are a real do-it-yourselfer, it is possible to compile PostgreSQL source code to run on AIX, HP-UX, SCO UnixWare and OpenServer, and Irix Unixes, and it can run on just about any chip architecture you can name, as the release notes show. ®
InfoWorld: Update: Google to launch open-source Chrome OS this year
by Martyn Williams
Google is developing an open-source operating system targeted at Internet-centric computers such as netbooks and will release it later this year, the company said Wednesday.
The OS, which will carry the same "Chrome" name as the company's browser, is expected to begin appearing on netbook computers in the second half of 2010, Google said in a blog post.
It is already talking to "multiple" companies about the project, it added.
The Chrome OS will be available for computers based on the x86 architecture, which is used by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and the Arm architecture.
Prototypes of Arm-based netbooks began appearing last month at the Computex show in Taiwan and Google's support for the architecture could give it a significant boost. Microsoft's mainstream Windows operating system doesn't run on Arm chips so many manufacturers were talking about using Linux or a version of Google's Android operating system. It's not immediately clear how much the two operating systems share in common code but Google said they are aimed at very different devices.
"Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android," it said. "Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web."
While Google is initially looking at the netbook segment of the market it might compete with Microsoft and Apple on larger, Internet-centric machines.
Chrome OS is "being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems," said Google.
The heart of Chrome OS is the Linux kernel. Applications, which can be written in standard Web programming languages, will run inside Google Chrome in a new windowing system. They will additionally run inside the Chrome browser on Windows, Mac or Linux machines, meaning that a single application could run on almost any computer.
Wide support for the platform will be key to getting developers involved and so an important factor in its degree of success.
"We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision," Google said in its blog post.
For end users Google promised a better computing experience on machines with faster access to e-mail, fast boot-up times, access to data from anywhere and the end of problematic hardware configuration, software updates and security issues.
"We are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work," Google said.
CNet: An epitaph for the Web standard, XHTML 2
by Stephen Shankland
XHTML 2, we hardly knew you.
XHTML 2, a technology intended to build a more powerful Web from the ground up, met a quiet end last week, spotlighting the difficulties of standardization in a fast-moving Internet. Introduced in 2002, XHTML 2 was a centerpiece of standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
But incompatibility with the existing Web and a direction at odds with Web developers' desires doomed it to a slow demise. On Thursday, after a long reconciliation with browser makers who'd struck off in a different direction, the W3C announced that it will wind down development of XHTML 2 this year.
Instead, the group will channel those resources into standardizing what the browser makers have been toiling on all these years: HTML 5, a sprawling collection of new features to improve the present Hypertext Markup Language. Although elements of XHTML 2 will live on in HTML 5, overall, the browser makers prevailed.
"XHTML 2 was a beautiful specification of philosophical purity that had absolutely no resemblance to the real world," said Bruce Lawson, HTML 5 evangelist for browser maker Opera.
So what went wrong? In short, the Web has many masters, but the ones with final say over its nature are those who build it page by page, not the standards group trying to create a new foundation.
XHTML 2 was designed to reform the Web as a medium for publishing documents, but the developers-
and the browser makers who listened closely to those developers-instead wanted a platform for interactive applications. And while that direction prevailed, its incarnation in HTML 5 faces its own set of challenges now.The consensus for HTML 5 support has been building for years, and the W3C already had been increasing its involvement in its standardization well before it decided to put an end to much of the competing XHTML 2 standard. Although the HTML-XHTML split has been fractious at times, there's inescapable tension between standards groups trying to chart the future and vendors whose products relate to those standards.
"I will not say it's been the smoothest way of doing things, but it's not an unnatural way for things to proceed," said Mike Smith, leader of HTML work at W3C, speaking of the reconciliation process that rejuvenated the W3C's HTML work. "Vendors are the ones who drive innovation on the Web for the most part."
Why XHTML?
So if it's so clear today that HTML 5 is the way to go, why was so much energy, time, and research invested in XHTML 2? It was an attempt start afresh without HTML's shortcomings.The X in XHTML stands for XML, which in turn stands for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a broad technology that uses a strict set of tags to label different types of content in a document, and XHTML was engineered specifically for the Web. XHTML brought rigor to the loosey-goosey and slap-dash world of HTML, and it would have permitted developers to employ a broader range of computing engines called parsers to digest and process the XML, Smith said.
XHTML "was a cleaner and better-architected version of HTML," Smith said. And in its earlier years, it had support. "At the time when XHTML 2 was first conceived and specified in the early drafts, most everybody thought it was a good idea. A lot of people in hindsight want to look back at it now and make the claim that they knew it wasn't going to have success," Smith said.
XHTML 2.0 made it to working draft stage, but only parts of the specification will live on in HTML 5.XHTML 2.0 made it to working draft stage, but only parts of the specification will live on in HTML 5.
One example of its utility is the tight coupling of textual information with a graphs encoded with the SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics format, Smith said. Another advantage was better browsing with the limited abilities of mobile phones.
One of the big problems with XHTML 2 was that it wasn't backwards compatible, though. Not only could it not be used to display existing Web pages, but Web browsers had to be expanded with an entirely new engine for handling the XML. Notably, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the dominant browser by far, couldn't handle XHTML on its own.
Another problem was that there was plenty of demand for improvements to HTML, which W3C had declared finished with version 4.01 in 1999.
"People were so focused on XHTML 2 that they were substantially less interested in modifying the application model and introducing new features to HTML that developers were clamoring for," said Arun Ranganathan, standards evangelist for Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser. "We felt the standards going on at the time...were disconnected from a large majority of developers.
Microsoft agrees with its browser rival.
"We've never heard a strong request from our developer audience and customers for XHTML 2," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE.
Enter WHATWG
One crucial moment came five years ago when Opera and Mozilla representatives showed the W3C an idea called WebForms for improving HTML. "We jointly presented this paper to W3C, who rejected it," Lawson said.Mozilla's Brendan Eich and Opera's Ian Hickson were displeased with how things went. "The best way to help the Web is to incrementally improve the existing web standards," concluded Eich, founder of the JavaScript Web programming language, after the meeting in a blog post.
Eich also announced there an Opera and Mozilla plan to take that evolutionary route. They launched an open e-mail list called WHATWG, short for Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. Apple, which offers its own Safari browser, soon began participating, too.
"It became a de facto standards organization without the formality of W3C. It's where we went to figure out what the future of the Web was," Ranganathan said.
Eventually, the Web-application direction won over the W3C. "Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally," said Web founder and W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee said in 2006.
But Berners-Lee at the time also maintained the commitment to the "well-formed," more rigorous XML-based future: "It is important to maintain HTML incrementally, as well as continuing a transition to well-formed world, and developing more power in that world."
In practice, the W3C world and WHATWG world involve many of the same people. That probably eased the reconciliation to the current state, where WHATWG and W3C operate simultaneously, the first more informal and the second with more careful handling of intellectual property concerns.
Ultimately, HTML carried the day. What began with interest in more sophisticated Web sites such as eBay blossomed with the arrival of Ajax, which used JavaScript to build more sophisticated Web-based applications. And Web applications weren't just theoretical ideas.
"When Gmail and Google Maps and Ajax came along, it became really clear we needed a new set of technologies that made it easier to make those kinds of applications," Smith said.
The transition culminated with W3C's bare-bones news last week: "Today the director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML."
Some features of XHTML 2 will be built into HTML 5, so the XHTML 2 work won't have been for naught, assuming a critical mass of browser makers do in fact include the necessary XML parser along the HTML parser.
HTML 5: no walk in the park
Though the W3C-WHATWG dust has mostly settled, the standard is far from finished, and indeed looks a long way off.The present approach involves a give and take between browser makers trying out new features and the standards group codifying them. Features can't make it to the ultimate W3C state, "final recommendation," until at least two browsers support the feature compatibly, Smith said.
In practice, that means adventurous Web developers who choose to support the new technologies in effect are blessing them even though the technology might well change.
HTML 5 elements came from all over. Canvas, which involves two-dimensional graphics, began at Apple's Safari and now has won over Opera, Firefox, and Google's Chrome. ContentEditable, which lets Web pages be edited in place, came from Microsoft. Google now is working on a faster communication feature called Web Sockets. Programmers for WebKit, the open-source project underlying Safari, are developing DataGrid, which brings spreadsheet-like tables with sorting and editing to Web pages.
"The speed of the web is continuing to pick up in general," Barzdukas said. HTML 5 feature support figures prominently in the browser sales pitches from Google and from Mozilla, with its "upgrade the Web" tag line for Firefox 3.5.
Actual standardization, though, remains distant. Mozilla's Ranganathan hopes for drafts of some HTML 5 elements this year and a draft of the full specification in 2010.
The HTML 5 built-in video situation is illustrative. Hickson, the HTML 5 editor and now Google employee, posted a lament about HTML 5 video last week because browser makers don't agree on whether to support the patent-free Ogg Theora format, preferred by Opera and Mozilla, or the commercially popular H.264 format, preferred by Google and Apple. The upshot for now: HTML 5 is trying to standardize video but doesn't specify which format to be used.
That pace of HTML 5 standardization important, given the importance Microsoft places on supporting actual standards and the company's commanding market share.
"The support of ratified standards (that Web developers) can use is something that we are extremely supportive of," Barzdukas said. "In some cases, it can be premature to start claiming support for standards that are not yet in fact standards."
