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Simple regex assist

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:55:51 GMT

If you're still writing some sql create and update statements by hand these may help you. Mainly, I wanted to post these so I wouldn't forget them.

Create a list of cfqueryparam's from a list of cfargumen's. If you don't do any column renaming in your code then this is straight forward:

Find: <cfargument name="(\w+)" type="(\w+)" [^>]+>
Replace With: <cfqueryparam value="Arguments.$1" cfslqtype="cf_sql_$2" />,

This next one will create all the values of an update statement from the list of cfqueryparam's, again if no column renaming has been done this is a one shot find/replace:

Find: (<cfqueryparam value="Arguments.([^"]+)" [^>]+>,?)

Replace With: $2 = $1

Configuring SQL Server Express 2005 For Remote Connections

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:01:57 GMT

This is a reference guide to change the settings in SQL Express Server to allow remote conections. I found most of my information at http://www.datamasker.com/SSE2005_NetworkCfg.htm , and I will be trying to simplify what is said there.

Configure SQL to use TCP/IP connections as well as local connections in the Surface Area Configuration Utility.
Select the Services and Connections section.
Under Database Engine -> Remote Connections choose to use local and remote connections (TCP/IP only or TCP/IP and named pipes). You can also do this in the SQL Server Configuration Manager tool under:
SQL Server 2005 Network Configuration -> Protocols for SQL Express
Now restart/start the SQL Server service.
You now need to configure Windows Firewall (only if you have it running) to exempt SQL Server and SQL Server Browser. To do this you simply need to add sqlservr.exe and sqlbrowser.exe to the exceptions.

The files can be found at:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\sqlservr.exe
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlbrowser.exe.

You should have a successfully configured SQL Server, so start trying to connect to it remotely. If you are still having issues it may be necessary to restart the computer for all changes to take place.

Craig.

Firefox Developer Extensions

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 05:00:00 GMT

This is just a reference post that I thought others may find valuable as well, but until I get an app that installs them all for me, here is a shopping list of all the Firefox extensions I like to use in my development setup.

Backup & Restore

Since we have a lot of extensions we use, first lets cover the extensions to backup and restore our extensions :-P

Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109
This extension backs up all your installed extensions in FF.

Compact Library Extension Organizer (CLEO)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2942
Your restore mechanism :-) From the description:
"CLEO is a Firefox extension that works with FEBE* to package any number of extensions/themes into a single, installable .xpi file..."

General

Web Developer Toolbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/
Probably the most popular web developer extension. This extension has everything from quick access to view source and cookie management functions to validation and CSS / display analysis functions.

Live HTTP Headers
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3829/
Great for viewing HTTP headers and Requests being made to the server via HTML, Javascript, or Flash / Flex.

FireFTP
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/
An FTP client for FireFox.

Download Statusbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/26/
A great replacement for Firefox's download manager window.

Google Browser Sync
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/
Useful for synchronizing bookmarks, etc. across computers.

Minimize To Tray
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2110
Allows Firefox (and Thunderbird if installed for it) to be minimized to an icon on the task bar.

CSS / HTML

CSS Viewer
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2104/
A great extension to help you see exactly what properties are being applied to any element under your mouse cursor.

ColorZilla
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/271/
Gets and copies and color from a page.

MeasureIt!
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/539/
Allows you to easily measure anything by drawing a square on the page.

IE View
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1429/
A quick way to open Internet Explorer to the current page via right-click.

ColdFusion

ColdFire
http://coldfire.riaforge.org/
A Firefox extension and CF debugging template that allows you to view your debugging info inside the Firebug extension. This is great to have all your debugging info in one place and the debugging info won't mess up your HTML layouts anymore when it is dropped into the page normally.

Javascript

FireBug
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/
FireBug is the most valuable extension for Firefox and Javascript development. It has a great JS debugger, inline console, and reviewing of AJAX requests. Beautiful.

Internationalization

Quick Locale Switcher
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1333/
The name says it all.

Mozilla Thunderbird Update Not Completing

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:35:00 GMT

Recently, I had an issue with Mozilla Thunderbird not being able to update. It would download the update, but not be able to install it saying it could not update some files. This would pretty much render Thunderbird useless because the update would try to run every time I started it and I would never be able to get into it.

The Fix - Stop Logitech QuickCam Software

Apparently, having a Logitech Webcam running can cause the updates to fail which is a freak compatibility issue I guess, but stopping QuickCam10.exe in my task manager sure enough allowed the update to run.

Just thought I would share this in case anyone else is Googling this issue without success.

Mike.

The Service Layer

Sun, 13 May 2007 01:17:14 GMT

Lately I have read a few blog posts and talked to a few developers that either disagree with or are unfamiliar with the reasons for using a service layer in web applications. After posting this as a comment on the great Peter Bell's blog , where he references the discussion, I realized I might be better off cleaning it up and posting it here. While I don't go into detail about how I use service objects, I will save that for a later post if anyone says they are interested.

What I usually do is create a service layer for all gateways, DAOs and many other types of handlers including an email service that can prioritize outbound emails in an email queue. Some may argue that I even overuse the service pattern, but in all truth, I think it is very underused in web applications.

These are my explanations of why I feel the service layer can be a great benefit to both the developer and the resulting application (in terms of performance and stability).

The Developer

Having services is often the more logical way for a programmer to think...It often puts things in a very real world perspective. For instance, why do i see so many implementations of a shopping cart that not only contain items, but calculate all the invoice totals, manage taxes, shipping, etc. Doesn't it seem a little more logical to take the cart, along with coupons, etc. to a single register (similar to what you would do in real life)? I find it very easy to deal with a large set of requirements this way (no memorizing URL diagrams or looking at classes with 400 functions). With DAOs and gateways for a typical bean I like having the service layer to say, "Hey, go put this thing in storage for me" which could be totally different places (database, xml, etc.) any time I use the same bean. On the other hand, I can enjoy the active record type pattern by using ColdSpring to pass my beans a dao and give them an incredibly simple save method.

The Application

The application becomes incredibly solid with the use of the service layer...I love knowing that my application loads and 90% of the memory it will ever use is set and ready to go (and it is much smaller than reinstantiating a bunch of large objects on every request). My applications rarely bounce up and down by massive percentages of processor and memory usage because a few more or less users are on. It becomes very easy to spot when something is awry because I know what to expect. Alternatively, with tools like Spring, ColdSpring, etc. I can load objects every time, or as a singleton when first needed, or anyway I like with a few keystrokes.

Conclusions

I think sometimes we get a little too radical for our own good. It seems fairly often lately that I run into "Why the heck do we need X debates?" that claim much less complexity, removing item X allows the developer more creativity, and the application more flexibility. While I think these debates are healthy, I try to remember one thing...programming is about us...if it wasn't, then why didn't someone just come up with a cross-platform assembly language so we could stop there. The service layer is a tool for making things easier for us to understand and manage...it is also incredibly flexible.

My reading lately brought me to asking myself:

How much more work is it to have a service object than to embed this into my objects as they are?

Is adding more types by having a bean and DAO singleton over complicating something?

I've come to the conclusion that the difference if there is one is probably within minutes of eachother, and I could see the service layer even winning out quite often only because I think it is often "more human" for the developer to think of many problems that way. Does every customer get a cash register at a store? Do we all have our very own post office? Makes it very easy to have a flexible application and not have to memorize a complicated UML diagram in my head at least. That answers both questions for me at least.

It is easy for us to use tools like the service layer in dynamic languages and we deserve that benefit for as little work as it is now to implement. That being said, if you don't think its the right tool for the job, don't use it...we all have paid the price for using the wrong tool before and we learn from those experiences differently.

Mike.

I'm A CFEclipse committer!

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:10:49 GMT

So, while I've been kind of a "sleeper" contributor to CFE, I have been ramping it up a bit lately and doing a little more than just keeping Mark Drew company and providing awkwardly humorous conversation. It's always wierd because you can't hear the person on the other end laughing with you...after years of messaging, I'm still self concious :-P

Anyway, more on the subject of this post, Mark Drew has decided that I'm finally worth the honor of having commit rights to the CFEclipse Subversion repository. Mainly this means two things to me:

Mark Drew doesn't think I'm gonna blow it up (or that the odds are better that I won't)
I feel like it means I have contributed some use be it in little bits to the project. I'm eager to see this contribution grow.

Anyway, whether you have been considering helping out with CFEclipse or not, I would like to reiterate how exciting it is to get to work with Mark even on the days I'm not able to do much more than discuss things with him. He has a way of making great things happen with CFE and making the entire process interesting and a lot of fun.

If you would be interested in experiencing the good and rewarding time that I've been getting, might I suggest contacting Mark to share your skills and see if there is something you'd like to do.

I'm not sure if this was an item everyone would be excited to hear about, but I'm very happy about it and I have noone nerdy to share this information with right now.

Thanks for putting up with me :-P

Mike Kelp

Query Analyzer Auto-Complete...Woot!

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:51:50 GMT

This is something I've wanted for a very long time, but did not have the room in my budget to purchase a tool for.

A company called Red Gate (http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Prompt/index.htm) has a nice piece of software that provides a whole bunch of features for SQL Server and looks to be very much worth its $195.00 price tag.

Apparently though, they released an older version of their tool for free that is still available here:

http://www.bustercollings.com/...

If you've been dreaming for autocomplete in Query Analyzer, then definitely check this thing out. It is a little annoying that it does have to make a seperate connection to the SQL Server to get the database metadata, but very quick and painless. And it makes it so easy to get all your tables / columns while you type.

Enjoy!

Mike.

EdomGroup Now On InstantSpot

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:42:41 GMT

Well, we finally caved in to the peer pressure we have received from so many of the developers we admire. We, like many of them have decided to move our blog here to InstantSpot.

Actually, we weren't really pressured. We do however know Aaron Lynch and Dave Shuck, the creators of InstantSpot, and know how passionate they are about making InstantSpot a great community and resource. Just talking to Aaron and Dave, it's hard not to be interested in what they've done here and where they wish to take it.

So far, we are really happy with the decision. I have gotten all of our post moved over, but haven't figured out how we'll do the comments yet, so we apologize, but you won't get the value from our older posts that commenters have added.

InstantSpot Hello's

We'd like to give a couple shoutouts to some of our friends who have been on InstantSpot a while, or plan on joining up soon, and encourage anyone reading this blog to check them out. We are very lucky to know plenty of intelligent, kind, and hilarious people.

Kari - Sup? We are "keen" to learn much great baby knowledge from you despite our current lack of babies to try it on. It's probably a good thing, we haven't quite figured out how they work yet anyway. They seem to suffer from a lack of good documentation. Thanks for working to fix that. :-)

Chau - My girlfriend and my inspiration for almost everything I do, especially how hard I work haha. She's considering joining us on InstantSpot and I hope she does so more people can realize just how cool she is.

Conrad Davis - One of the coolest developers around, Conrad is a man I've been honored to know and work with in the past.

Dave Shuck - Manager of the CFUG, InstantSpot creator, and someone who manages to inspire you know matter how little you may get to talk to him.

Aaron Lynch - Man of random hilarity, InstantSpot creator, and an excellent ColdFusionista / CFUG participant. A good man, indeed.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's time and interest and we hope to hear from more of you as we blog a bit more often with a lot more interesting items.

Mike Kelp
EdomGroup

Mimicry is the Highest Form of Flattery

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 02:43:00 GMT

I'm a ColdFusion advocate as are the majority reading this post, I'd assume. Since being introduced to the CFML language I've begun seeing more CFML engine iplementations. Some of these are free, some are Open Source. The latest one Smith is a CFML engine written completely in Java that runs in a servlet container. The authors of Smith are waiting for feedback from the ColdFusion community before deciding to release the source code but they are giving away the engine for free. Three other CFML implementations I know of are: BlueDragon, Railo, and IgniteFusion. Each of these have their own specific strengths. Each also varies in the way they were implemented.

I believe it is imperative that there are free (and non-free) alternative CFML engines to spread the word about the language and compete with the currently dominate free web languages like PHP, Perl, and Python. If anyone reading this has heard of another CFML engine please post a link to it in the comments so the word gets spread. Also, don't forget to give these engines a try. Play with them, send complements and recommendations. May be the next time you need to setup a computer to host a small to medium sized CF site you can use one of these projects in conjunction with a MySQL or PostgreSQL database.

Color Space Generator

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:07:19 GMT

Part of the work I've been doing for my thesis involves generating color images from indexed files. This is the same principle as any indexed image format (like GIF) where each pixel is a number which maps to a table of red, green, blue values. At the time I knew how to get the basic 256 colors from the color wheel. The problem was the fact that my indexed image needed over 100,000 different colors. Of course generating 100K colors is one thing, making an image that uses so many colors look good is another. So after a day of digesting color theory websites I finally understood the concept of a color space, color models, gamuts and enough on how they go together to make a Java class that lets me generate a color space where the colors work together. I've uploaded a zip of the class file here for anyone who can find some use for it. At the time I was tempted to add an alpha channel which would cause a gradient around color values, maybe later. To use the class simply call the generate method, the arguments are: the starting color offset (0 to 1785), next is the number of colors to generate, and finally the number of colors to skip in between.

Enjoy.

The pure color values are on the following offsets:

Offset	R	G	B
0	255	0	0
255	255	255	0
510	0	255	0
765	0	255	255
1020	255	255	255
1275	0	255	255
1530	0	255	0
1785	0	0	0

Font rendering difference in Firefox 2.0 RC2 on Linux

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:00:45 GMT

I was reading an entry on slashdot about the new Firefox 2.0 RC2 release and decided to give it a try. The new aesthetic changes are nice and I definitely like the new add-on's manager which manages themes and extensions. While I'm typing this I realize another added feature is a spell check for form text area fields. One thing that I couldn't figure out, though, was why slashdot looked different on firefox 2.0 than on firefox 1.5, so I finally took a screenshot of the two and held them side-by-side. The image above shows the results. On the left is version 1.5 and on the right is version 2.0 rc3. I checked the settings of the fonts and the only thing in 2.0 rc3 that is different is there is no font resolution (DPI) setting. The name of the fonts used are the same and at the same sizes. I'm not sure if this font difference is the same under Windows since my primary system is a Linux box.

An Unbiased Description Of Interfaces

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:43:22 GMT

For a long time I've been reading everyone wanting interfaces or not wanting interfaces in ColdFusion; make it more like Java or make it more abstract. No one has yet described what an interface means to them (since most think of or only know of Java interfaces). So, for anyone reading and for people just coming to ColdFusion or programming in general I supply this short list of what an interface is. No opinion, just the description of an interface/protocol as used in the Object Oriented Programming paradigm.

An interface is:

the list of operations understood by the object
the arguments these operations can be supplied with
the types of results the operations return
What #1 - #3 mean is that you as a developer can be handed an object that you have no idea how it works but because it adheres to an interface you know what it does. This also means that you can write an interface for something you need -say image resizing- and use that interface throughout your program. Then give your interface to some other programmer to develop and as long as they adhere to that interface it will work in your code.
the invariants preserved despite modification to the object
An invariant is a condition that does not change. The simplest example I can think of is where you have an object with two fields (variables): VariableA and VariableB then in a method that receives an argument and sets the value of VariableA the value of VariableB should not be changed after the method returns. This is important because if you call a method you have to have a clear understanding not only of what was modified but what wasn't.
any exceptional situations the client using the interface must handle
Error handling is important especially when code is being written by more than one person. Supplying the exceptional situations of a method is a good way to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

ColdFusion Wishlists And A General Understanding

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 01:43:13 GMT

I just thought I would chime in on some of the extreme beating around of wishlist features I've seen lately. I will explain how I feel and go into some arguments that I think have been taken a little to the extreme as to where CF programming and the products around it are headed.

We Are Headed In The Right Direction

The great amount of argument about all of the features in CF and the attentive attitudes we are getting from Adobe, Bluedragon, and anyone with a stake in CF is nothing but encouraging. It makes me very proud to be a CF developer. I am very confident in our community's ability to make CF continue to be the best language for web development out there, no matter who the largest vendor is, etc. With that said, here are my thoughts:

Why I Want Interfaces and Other "OO"-reminiscent Mechanisms in CF

The reason for this is simple. There are many common tasks that we get involved in when using objects in any language. These include API development, data abstraction, and utility methods. CF supports objects (CFCs), why not support that nice suite of tools that developers in almost every other language as well as some CF developers expect?

This has absolutely nothing to do with "OO" as the obsessive niche and often wrongly defined practice in our community as much as it does convenience, something ColdFusion is definitely good at. The fact is, I use interfaces so I don't have to remind developers what to do, I use static methods so I don't have to instantiate objects or store service objects in a global cache, not because I am a part of a small "OO" core of developers. These are very powerful and simple concepts that even beginning developers from their first CFC have the ability to understand. I think the flaw in OO is that many are over-educated to the point that they elevate it to an endless science rather than common sense.

Oh and you know what? Interfaces and static methods have absolutely nothing to do with Java. Their definition is way outside the realm of a Java-only feature. I am trying to make CF the most well-rounded, powerful, feature-rich language it can be, not like any other language. I am not going to define it as a presentation layer, because the reality as I have seen it is that most of us reach back into Java for little or none of our back-end. I know Java and use Java, but I work with the best tool for the job, given the tools available to me and for web development, that is CF (not just for the presentation layer). Because CF has a lot of presentation tools, doesn't mean we should focus all or even most of our attention on those things at any one time, ignoring performance, interactivity, and damn well-tested practices, but make them better.

I would be glad to elaborate more on this if anyone has any questions because I feel it is horribly under-discussed beyond an "I want or don't want interfaces" level.

What Makes ColdFusion?

Flash Forms, PDF Generation, etc. are features that are unmatched in any other web development tool out there, but they do not define ColdFusion. Anyone who uses ColdFusion for these features alone is not a loyal ColdFusion user or even remotely confident in the language because the moment a tool is better at one of those for a week, ColdFusion would theoretically lose all of its purpose.

ColdFusion is a combination of all of our wishlists.

It is the syntax: I love that tag-based syntax even at a programmatic level, much less a UI level for its ease of reading and self-documenting capability. This is saying a lot for someone with a C, C++, Java education in CSCI.

It is the simplicity: ColdFusion offers us easy file manipulation for many tasks, a relaxation of types (note I did not say dynamic typing) and much more. All of our code constructs say what they mean and do not require us to worry about the janitorial tasks of programming like loop indexes, etc. We expect these capabilities in all languages, but no language makes them as simple as CF

It is the integration: Those features mentioned at the beginning of this section fit here. How proud were you when you used your first cfchart tag? Sweet, wasn't it? These are the great features that are often mistaken as THE reason people use CF in my opinion, but they are indeed great. We have to remember that these are the features that "package" CF. They make it very attractive and incredibly useful, but without the core functionality that say, CFCs offer, my bet is that not a single developer I know would use it.

Lastly, it is the organization: By "organization" I don't mean Adobe, Macromedia, New Atlanta, or Allaire, but the community as a whole. The willingness we have to expand this language in all directions by leaving it open enough to create many different servers and projects, but tightly knitted enough to keep good naming conventions and a solid transition space between products. The willingness we have to compare it to all of the other tools out there without becoming alienated. Integrate their capabilities and learn from them to make an even better tool for ourselves.

Well, I intended to get through many of the arguments and mis-interpretations I have seen in the community lately, but I think it is better that this post is more unifying and encouraging to all of us, not just those who agree with interfaces, etc. To use the wise words of Gary Funk, "Google before you jump to your death" when you think you are decided on an issue that you may have thought plain and simple, no matter what your experience level.

Anyway, please understand that I speak from my point of view, but this pep-talk is as much for me as anyone else.

Why I Don't Like Microsoft

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:41:19 GMT

There is nothing in this entry that people haven'd before. I just needed a place to speak my mind for a second.

Recently I switched from Mozilla Thunderbird to Outlook 2003. The reason for this drastic change was that I have a HP iPaq that works great with Outlook. I can sync calendars, emails, contacts, everything; I know, a silly reason to switch. Then I remembered why I was using Thunderbird in the first place, the following (very important) file extentions are automatically blocked by Outlook and unless you're running an Exchange server there is nothing you can do about it!

url, asp, chm, js, ins, isp, its, cer - A url address, ASP pages, compiled html fiels, javascript files, IIS settings, and Internet Certificates - Well, so much for Microsoft providing ASP.NET developers with an easy to use tools

csh, ksh - Unix C shell and Korn shell scripts - I didn't even know these ran natively under windows!

mad, maf, mag, mam, maq, mar, mas, mat, mau, mav, maw, mda, mdb, mde, mdt, mdw, mdz - Everything MS Access! - This is just ridiculous - how can any company that purchases Microsoft Office but can't yet afford enterprise Exchange server work like this!

The thing that really gets me though is that there is no way around any of this. Microsoft took it upon themselves to forcably dictate what you can and can not do.

ColdFusion Flash Forms To Flex 2

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:39:29 GMT

I'll start off by saying that when Macromedia (when they were still Macromedia) released CFMX 7, it was truly amazing. CFMX 7 has a feature set that I have not seen another application server come close to matching; Flash forms, pdf generation, XForms, gateways, and the list goes on. What was equally amazing was the extent to which the CF community took these features and ran with them. The ASFusion group did things with Flash forms people thought were impossible. Todd, at cfsilence.com developed a data source browser, called Genesis, that connects to your CF server and allowed you to run SQL against the data sources. All these things have really helped push ColdFusion as a valuable resource for web application development. Now Adobe, since aquiring Macromedia, has gone and done it again by releasing the Flex 2 SDK for free. The demos are insane and whats more is that now every website, running ColdFusion or not, can have rich Flash content - that cool admin control panel, or the great shopping cart.

So with all the giving from Adobe and the CF community going around I decided to post the Ant build script I wrote for automatically compiling Flex 2 applications from within Eclipse.

To use the script:

copy the source into a build.xml file in your project folder
edit the properties at the top of the file to point to your sdk install directory, debug flash player, the input mxml file and the output swf file
right click the file and choose "Run As" > "External Tools"
create two new "Ant Build" configurations, one called "build" and the other called "run"
now in the targets tab of the build configuration make sure only the build target is checked
in the targets tab of the run configuration make sure only the run target is checked

Once the setup is done you can run the build commands using the 'Alt+Shift+x q' shortcut.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="Flex2 build script" default="build" basedir=".">
   <property name="installdir" value="/Flex2SDK"/>
   <property name="libdir" value="${installdir}/lib"/>
   <property name="mxmlc" value="${libdir}/mxmlc.jar"/>

   <property name="src" location="customer.mxml"/>
   <property name="swf" location="customer.swf"/>
   <property name="player" location="${installdir}/player/debug/SAFlashPlayer.exe"/>

   <target name="init">
   </target>

   <target name="build" depends="init">
      <antcall target="compile"/>
   </target>

   <target name="compile">
      <java jar="${mxmlc}" fork="true" failonerror="true">
         <classpath>
            <fileset dir="${libdir}">
               <include name="**/*.jar"/>
            </fileset>
         </classpath>
         <jvmarg value="-Dapplication.home=${installdir}"/>
         <jvmarg value="-ea"/>
         <jvmarg value="-DAS3"/>
         <jvmarg value="-DAVMPLUS"/>
         <jvmarg value="-Xms32m"/>
         <jvmarg value="-Xmx756m"/>
         <jvmarg value="-Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false"/>
         <arg value="-incremental"/>
         <arg file="${src}"/>
      </java>
   </target>

   <target name="run">
      <exec executable="${player}" dir="${basedir}" spawn="true">
         <arg value="${swf}"/>
      </exec>
   </target>

</project>

CFEclipse - Learning and Helping

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 01:51:16 GMT

So Eclipse 3.2 is officially out and pre-empting it was a nice new beta of CFEclipse 1.3.

Recently (end of May), I started helping out the CFEclipse project with some bug fixes and contributing to a few small improvements for the project. While I only came into the project in time to make an incredibly small contribution, I am planning to be as big a part as possible in the next release.

This brings me to my next point:

Learning

Mark Drew is, for lack of better words, a badass. I didn't realize when I initially offered to help that he has literally been the only full developer on the project for a while. The fact that he kept going says a lot about his passion for the project and his commitment to the ColdFusion community as a whole. I only hope I can contribute to CFEclipse even half as much as he has. I think it is important that we all realize this because in addition to all that Mark has done, he has put up with a lot, and kept his attitude quite well despite.

Helping

So anyway, while this blog is still new and not many will see this, I would like to remind those of you that can to contribute what you can to CFEclipse if you are using it. Get Mark something off his Amazon Wishlist or purchase some CFEclipse schwag.

Or, if you are really committed and brushed up on your Java, come help out! I can say from experience that Mark went out of his way to make me feel good about helping out and we've even gotten quite a few laughs via Google Talk.

Anyway, for whoever reads, remember how well off a particular piece of software can make you (particularly in the open source community and that IDE you got for free) as well as how the people that gave you that product deserve all of our respect and appreciation.

Thanks for subscribing to this moral outburst.

Mike.

Java performance analysis - a real life example

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 03:43:25 GMT

For my thesis I'm writing a Java program that parses two text files (representing satellite images) and performs some analysis on them. The two files are 128 MB and each was taking ~33 seconds to parse. The analysis takes only a fraction of that time, then the results are written back to an output file.

Thinking this was very slow, since the files should be pretty much sequential access off the disk and the read-ahead-buffer would have cached the next block, I decided to dig a little. I rewrote the parsing algorithm in C since it's easier to manage the low-level IO. I used the file stream functions (fopen,fread,fclose) provided by stdio. When I ran the program it took ~10 seconds.

This was insane. Java does have more overhead due to its garbage collection, HotSpot optimizer, and object memory management but it should not be a magnitude of 3x slower. After a few minutes looking at the Java implementation I realized I had forgotten to instantiate a BufferedReader. I immediately jumped to the documentation and there it was, each call to the read method of the FileReader blocks until data is available. If no BufferedReader is supplied this means a context switch for each call. No wonder Java was taking so long. Adding the buffering I reran the algorithm and wow, 13 seconds. Not to bad for a “boated” language.

Figuring I had more places in my program which could be optimized I began looking. The first place I went was to one of the main methods, the one which did the analysis on each image. The logic was pretty simple, find the next pattern in the given image, see if it exists in a lookup table, if so update its statistics or create a new key and add it as a new entry. The data structure I was using for the lookup table was a simple HashMap object. When writing that section of the program I was still relatively new to the Java language and just went with what I'd used in other languages, an associative array.

I did a little analysis with some System.out.println statements and found that on average there was a 14,000 : 15 ratio between reads and writes on the lookup table. Knowing this ratio was pretty stable (I wasn't going to get anywhere near 50% writes) I decided a better data structure would be something with read time of O(n) or less, instead of O(h(k)) where h(k) was the hash function on the key. This meant an array would be best, but I didn't want the hassle of managing the size of the array as new patterns where found. Java had to have something for this. After a little searching I found java.util.concurrent.CopyOnWriteArrayList. This was exactly what I needed. After a little tweaking the new code ran in 1/3 the time.

After this I wrote some small timed programs to examine the running time of the HashMap data structure and the CopyOnWriteArrayList. What I found was as the mutations approached 25% the CopyOnWriteArrayList's performance slowed at an exponential rate. Finally, I couldn't evaluate the performance because the tests were taking too long. On the other hand, the HashMap data structure had a fairly constant performance time irrelevant on the read/write ratio.