Starting in April I will be a member of the documentation team for MySQL. Among many other projects and responsibilities my main area of focus will be redeveloping on the connector documentation (i.e. the interfaces between MySQL and ODBC, JDBC, perl, python and one or two others).

The new job starts in April, and I’ll be continuing with some of my other work, such as articles for IBM developerWorks, my blogging at Computerworld and, of course, Cheffy.

As always, news, information and updates will be available here, and the collection of all the sites into a single blog and feed is available at Planet MCslp. The other sites that that builds from will probably now be updated, simply because I have more to do them!

Part 4 of the series Tyler and I have been writing showing you how to build a Grid using Web Services has appeared on IBM’s developerWorks site.

Here’s the precis:

The effective exchange of information is vital in any grid. In a resource-led grid like the Movie application covered in this tutorial, you must have effective exchange of the data being stored between nodes in the grid, otherwise information storage is pointless. In this, the fourth of a six-part “Building a grid using Web services standards” tutorial series, you’ll learn where to exchange data in the application data, how you can ensure the exchange of information, and how to combine standards like Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM) and Web Services Security (WSS) to provide reliable and secure exchange of information.

A more detailed description:

In this series, we’ll look at the ground-up development of a grid-based movie application, using the different standards to implement the different components of the system — which together provide the entire structure of the grid application. The application in question is a combination of resource and CPU grid technology for the distributed storage and recovery of movie files in a database. By using grid technology, you can spread the load of the storage requirements and provide additional functionality throughout the grid for manipulating and accessing movie files in alternative formats, sizes, resolutions, and configurations.
In this tutorial, you’re going to produce an environment for the grid nodes to store and return resource properties and information through Web services. You’ll also build a client that obtains the information for each of the nodes on the grid manager, which, in turn, sums up the information and provides it to grid client.

You might also want to read the earlier parts:

• Building a grid with web services, Part 1
• Building a grid with web services, Part 2
• Building a grid with web services, Part 3

Before finally reading Building a grid with web services, Part 4: Exchanging Data.

Back in September 2005 I presented two sessions at EclipseWorld on EPIC. My first tutorial based on the topics and techniques covered in the first session was released in January, and now the followup, covering debugging Eclipse is available too. Here’s the outline blurb:

Debugging Perl applications can be a frustrating process. Many Perl programmers rely on print statements and so-called “postmortem debugging.” Others use the built-in Perl debugger. Neither provides a coherent execution environment for monitoring the execution of a script, and neither supports the debugging of a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script during execution. In this tutorial, we will look at the debugging functionality offered by the Eclipse Perl Integration (EPIC) plug-in for Eclipse, which offers a rich debugging environment available and integrated with the EPIC Perl development environment.

You can also read the first tutorial, although it is not really required before reading the new How to debug Perl applications with Eclipse.

Part 3 of the building a grid using only web services is now available. This part of the series deals with the exposure of resources so that we can track and monitor information about our grid, both at a grid node level, and across the entire grid.

Once again, the tutorial has made top picks on the IBM developerWorks Grid computing page!

Here is the intoductory blurb:

In this tutorial, you’re going to produce an environment for your grid nodes to store and return resource properties and information through Web services. You’ll also build a client that obtains the information for each of the nodes on the grid manager that, in turn, sums up the information and provides it to the grid client. Finally, you will test the new management service by installing Apache Geronimo and Axis2 in order to deploy your grid manager service.

You can read the first part of the tutorial through this link.

Then you can read Building a grid with web services, Part 2: Adding security.

Finally, get up to speed with Part 3.

A new tutorial, based around one of the presentations I made at EclipseWorld 2005 has been published at IBM developerWorks.

The tutorial is based on the presentation I made on building Perl applications using Eclipse and the EPIC plug-in.

Here’s the summary info from the tutorial so you can get a better idea of the content:

For many Perl programmers, the typical development environment is probably an
editor like Emacs coupled with a command-line environment. The problem is you
tend to spend most of your day switching between Emacs and the command line,
and it gets worse if you are doing Web development, as you have to switch between
Emacs, your command line, and your Web browser as you write, execute, and check
logs for information. Surprisingly, there are few IDEs that have really captured the
Perl programmer’s imagination over the years, which is why EPIC and Eclipse fills
such a void.

EPIC is a complete plug-in suite that supports a new “nature” within Eclipse. The
EPIC plug-in incorporates extensions to the editor so that it understands Perl
structure and layout. The plug-in also adds additional views and interfaces to your
code, and related information enables you to view documentation, execute your Perl
applications, and debug them.

About this tutorial
This tutorial will look at the basics of the EPIC plug-in before moving on to an
examination of the EPIC system using a real-world example, developing a small
module and script entirely within Eclipse that supports RSS parsing. You’ll use this
as an opportunity to examine other areas, such as the integration with Perldoc, code
folding and refactoring — all of which can make the application development process
run more smoothly. By the end, you will have a good understanding of how the EPIC
plug-in can be used to develop your Perl applications within Eclipse.

You can read the full tutorial.

Look out for a forthcoming follow-up piece on debugging Perl applications within Eclipse.

The second part of a new series of tutorials on building a grid application based on standardized web services like WSRM (Reliable Messaging) and WS-Security is now available.

This second part looks at the development of a security model using the WS-Security standard. In this tutorial we introduce the basics of WS-Security, how to create and share a token and how to use the token to verify transactions between the grid manager and individual grid nodes.

Once again, the tutorial has made top picks on the IBM developerWorks Grid computing page!

As mentioned for Part 1, this is a joint venture between myself and Tyler Anderson. Tyler has provided the code, based on my design guidelines and thoughts for the grid. Tyler has done a stunning job on the code - it gets even better as we start to approach some of the more interesting stuff like WSRM and resource properties. The final grid solution - which I’m just writing up now, is fantastic.

Unfortunately, you’ll need to wait a few more weeks before you get to see the final code!

You can read the first part of the tutorial through this link.

Then you can read Building a grid with web services, Part 2: Adding security.

The new ‘Building a Grid with Web Services’ tutorial series has sparked a new section of the IBM developerWorks grid zone.

You can find the new area (which will eventually contain links to all the tutorials in the series) through this link.

The remainder of the series should be posted just about weekly, but I will of course post up link here for each part.