Development
VDC: the Virtual Data Center
The Virtual Data Center is: an operational, open-source, digital library to enable the sharing of quantitative research data. The project acknowledgments include a long list of authors and contributors working at the Harvard-MIT Data Center. The project is being funded by the National Science Foundation's Digital Libraries Initiative.
![[VDC]](https://static.lwn.net/images/ns/vdc.png)
The
project description gives a deeper description of what
VDC can be used for:
VDC provides a a complete open-source, digital library system for the management, dissemination, exchange, and citation of virtual collections of quantitative data The VDC functionality provides everything necessary to maintain and disseminate an individual collection of research studies: including facilities for the storage, archiving, cataloging, translation, and dissemination of each collection. On-line analysis is provided, powered by the R Statistical environment. The system provides extensive support for distributed and federated collections including: location-independent naming of objects, distributed authentication and access control, federated metadata harvesting, remote repository caching, and distributed virtual collections of remote objects.
Uses of VDC include:
- Study preparation for format conversion of data.
- Study management for data archiving and cataloging.
- Interoperability with data in a number of standard research formats.
- Dissemination of data including downloading, format conversion, and subset generation.
- On-line analysis for generating statistics and graphics.
- Distribution and federation for making the data available widely.
- Replication for creating and managing persistent dataset identifiers.
The final version 1.0 of the Virtual Data Center (VDC)
was released this week.
"Release 1.0 provides all core features and contains no known bugs. Supported standards and protocols and formats include: DDI, Dublin Core, and MARC for metadata; R,SPSS, SAS,ASCII, and STATA for data; OAI and Z39.50 for queries; UNF's and Handle's for naming/citation.
".
For further reading, the VDC Documentation page contains a number of papers and other reference material about the project.
The code is available for download here, packages are currently available for Red Hat Linux 9, Red Hat Advanced Server 3 and Fedora Core 1. Packages for SUSE are on the to-do list. Digging through the source code repository for VDC reveals a large collection of Perl code, shell scripts, and R code. The project Design Overview white paper (PDF) is a good starting point for more detailed information on the project's architecture. VDC has been released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
System Applications
Database Software
QtSqlBrowser 0.8 released
Version 0.8 of QtSqlBrowser has been released. "The purpose of this project is to provide a simple, generic GUI database browsing frontend. The tool is a very simple aggregation of the Qt database classes. The database abstraction is provided by the Qt database drivers. The drivers for PostgreSQL and MySQL have been found to work well." The software is in stable condition, but it is not yet feature-complete.
Interoperability
Samba 3.0.8 pre1 released
Version 3.0.8 pre1 of Samba is available with bug fixes and new migration functionality for the net tool.Samba 3.1.0 released
Version 3.1.0 of Samba, the first release of the 3.1.0 development branch, is out. "Samba 3.1.0 will include changes to winbindd (for scalability), code for implementing NT privileges, some proposed fixes to the printing code's background queue update daemon, and others."
Libraries
libvorbis 1.1.0 and libogg 1.1.2 have been released
new versions of libvorbis and libogg are available from the Ogg Vorbis audio compression project. "The new libogg fixes some FLAC issues and libvorbis 1.1.0 features the new tunings from aoTuV."
Mail Software
SpamBayes 1.0 released
For those looking for another tool for their anti-spam arsenal: SpamBayes 1.0 has been released. SpamBayes is a bayesian tool, but it takes a rather different approach to this technique; see the SpamBayes background page for details.
Networking Tools
VPNs and Public Key Infrastructure (O'Reilly)
Scott Brumbaugh explains virtual private networks on O'Reilly. "The virtual private network (VPN) is increasingly becoming an invaluable part of every business network. With broadband available in more and more places, small- and medium-size businesses are taking advantage of VPN technology and leveraging the investment they've made in their internal private networks, expanding services available to customers, partners, and staff. This article focuses on VPN tunneling. Because it is also necessary to understand the basic principles of data encryption, this article will also summarize the set of technologies that form a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). We will see how to ensure privacy in a virtual private network."
Security
The OpenSSH project turns five
The OpenSSH project is celebrating its fifth birthday. It is a rare project which can go from nonexistence to almost complete domination in that period of time, but OpenSSH has done it.
Web Site Development
PHP Point Of Sale 8.0 Released (SourceForge)
Version 8.0 of PHP Point Of Sale is out. "PHP Point Of Sale (POS) is designed to help small businesses with keeping track of customers, items and inventory, and generate reports based on sales. This program works great for businesses that use cash, check, or account numbers for their sales. PHP Point Of Sale 8.0 is a groundbreaking release for this application. This release adds multi language support!"
PHPSurveyor 0.98 final (SourceForge)
Version 0.98 final of PHPSurveyor, set of PHP scripts for creating online surveys, is available. "While this is labelled a "stable" release, indicating that the recent months have been dedicated to bugfixing rather than the development of new features, PHPSurveyor should continue to be considered a development in beta. Although significant testing has taken place, bugs may still exist, and patches for these will be released where possible."
UnCommon Web 0.3.0 released
Version 0.3.0 of UnCommon Web, a web application development framework written in Common Lisp, is available. "This version exports the public interface from the UCW package, adds the new package UCW-USER and includes better support for expired session handling. It also features improvements to components and HTML generation, better documentation, and more."
Five 0.2b released (Zope 3 in Zope 2)
Version 0.2b of Five, a Zope 2 product that allows the use of Zope 3 technologies, is out. "A lot is new and improved in this release, including improved traversal system, bridging system for Zope 2 interfaces, Zope 3 events for Zope 2 objects, and more."
A Day in the Life of #Apache
Rich Bowen works with Apache configuration issues on O'Reilly. "This month he covers how to get Apache to send a different Server response so that no one can identify what version of Apache you're running, or any of the modules you have installed. The less information your server reveals, the safer it will be from crackers who want to try and break in."
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
amaroK: Next Generation Audio Player Hits 1.1 (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers release 1.1 of amaroK, an audio player application. "amaroK is the first KDE application to use the GStreamer Multimedia Framework without any dependency on external bindings. amaroK can also integrate with xine so you have the freedom of choosing your own flavor. With version 1.1 there are many exciting changes that make using amaroK even more fun."
Gnomoradio 0.14.1 announced
Version 0.14.1 of Gnomoradio, a peer-to-peer music playing system, is available. "Version 0.14.1 fixes a bug that some people were experiencing downloading files, and it fixes a few bugs when scanning all local music on startup."
Jamboree 0.5 announced
Version 0.5 of Jamboree, a music player for GNOME, is out. "This version adds support for typeahead search of albums and artists, contributed by Mats-Ola Persson. It also adds support for the latest stable branch of GStreamer, and features many small user interface improvements."
Desktop Environments
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)
The September 24, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online. Here's the content summary: "KPDF supports table of contents. Krita adds scaling. Plastik is now the default style. The aKademy section introduces the requirements of the KDE 4 multimedia architecture, reports about kdemultimedia developers' plans and summarizes the first talk "MAS in KDE" of the multimedia track."
Electronics
Electric 7.00 released
Version 7.00 of Electric, a VLSI Design System, is out. "Electric is moving from C to Java. Version 7 is the final, transitional, C version. A preliminary version of the Java implementation (Version 8) is also available and working, though missing some functionality."
Financial Applications
SQL-Ledger 2.4.3 released
SQL-Ledger version 2.4.3 has been announced. Changes include default customer/vendor/parts/employee numbers, start and end dates for deactivation, more search fields on the customer/vendor screen, AR/AP transaction printing, and check/receipt printing.
GUI Packages
gob2 2.0.10 released
Version 2.0.10 of gob2, the GTK+ object generator, is out with numerous changes and bug fixes.FLTK 1.1.5rc3 released
Version 1.1.5 rc 3 of FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit, has been announced. "The third release candidate for FLTK 1.1.5 is now available for download and testing. You now have until Ocotber 8th, 2004 to report any problems with this release candidate". The list of changes and bug fixes is lengthy.
PyGTK 2.3.97 (unstable) is out
Unstable version 2.3.97 of PyGTK, the Python bindings to GTK, is available. "This is the final release candidate before 2.4.0 and if nothing serious turns up I'll rename this tarball and upload it as 2.4.0. Please test this thoroughly and report any serious bugs so they can be resolved before the final release."
PyQt v3.13 Released
Version 3.13 of PyQt is available. "Changes since the last release include support for the QUuid, QMetaObject and QMetaProperty classes. PyQt is a comprehensive set of Qt bindings for the Python programming language and supports the same platforms as Qt. Like Qt, PyQt is available under the GPL (for UNIX, Linux and MacOS/X), a commercial license (for Windows, UNIX, Linux and MacOS/X) and a free educational license (for Windows)."
Qt 4 Preview 2 Highlights Accessibility; D-BUS Bindings for Qt 4 (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers recent developments with QT 4 including the second Qt 4 Technical Preview which covers new accessibility support, and a preview of new D-BUS bindings.
Imaging Applications
First Krita Preview Release (KDE.News)
The first preview release of Krita, a painting and image editing application for KOffice, has been announced. "Krita, formerly known as Krayon, formerly known as KImageShop, never known as nor intended to be the Kimp, is available for your testing pleasure. For the first time since development started in 1999, Krita is complete enough to be packaged as the first preview release."
Instant Messaging
Chatzilla 0.9.65 Now Available (MozillaZine)
Version 0.9.65 of Chatzilla, a Mozilla IRC client, has been released. "Version 0.9.65 is a culmination of months of work from ChatZilla developers. It fixes 32 known bugs and adds many useful new features. Additions since version 0.9.64 include away-status coloration in the user list, SSL support, new user commands, and a revitalized assortment of emoticons."
Interoperability
Wine Traffic
The September 24, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic is online with the latest Wine project news.
Music Applications
OpenSong 0.9.9 Released! (SourceForge)
Version 0.9.9 of OpenSong, a cross-platform application for managing chords and lyrics sheets, is available. "This next release contains quite a few bug fixes, set list printing, proxy support, module loading, a new background image chooser, backgrounds folders, songs folders, multiple themes per song, key field, aka field, key line field, ccli import now imports the new song fields, configurable alert font, live scripture browsing during presentations, HTML song export, and more!"
Q multimedia examples released
Some examples of multimedia programs written in the Q functional programming language have been made available. The list includes the applications QAudioPlayer, QMidiCC, QMidiPlayer, and QSCSynth.
Web Browsers
Epiphany 1.4.1 is out
Version 1.4.1 of Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, is available with numerous bug fixes. "Starting with version 1.4.1, Epiphany can be compiled against firefox' libraries as well as mozilla's libraries."
Epiphany Extensions 1.4.1 are out
Version 1.41 of the Epiphany Extensions are available. Changes include bug fixes, translation work, and a new sidebar extension.
Miscellaneous
Blogfish 1.0 RC1 released
Version 1.0 RC1 of Blogfish, a Blogger's panel applet for the Gnome desktop, is available. Changes include improved networking code, more lifelike fish movement, better installation scripts, and more.JXplorer v3.1 release candidate available (SourceForge)
A stable release candidate of JXplorer 3.1, an ldap browser written in Java, has been announced. "This release includes a bunch of new security goodies, such as improved SSL handling with browser-like detection of server certificates, optional client side password hashing, and kerberos support."
Nautilus-Sendto 0.2-1 announced
Version 0.2-1 of Nautilus-Sendto, an application that integrates nautilus, evolution and gaim, is out. Changes include new plugins support, an improved UI, bug fixes, and more.Revelation 0.3.4 "Cellardoor" released
Version 0.3.4 of Revelation, a password manager for GNOME, is available. "This release fixes a couple of bugs; a crash when editing an entry on Python 2.2 systems, and the name for domain fields was accidentally replaced with the field tooltip. There has also been a couple of minor UI improvements."
Languages and Tools
C
GCC Newsletter
The GCC Newsletter for September 27, 2004 is available. "gcc is a rather old codebase which has gone through many maintainers and developers. Sometimes, it can be particularly glaring. Roger Sayle gives a detailed explanation of that specific issue."
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The September 21-28, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with the week's Caml language articles.
Java
Developing Your First EJBs, Part 2 (O'Reilly)
(O'Reilly) continues an excerpt series on EJB development with part two. "This week concludes this series with a look at how to develop a session bean, building on the examples presented in part one."
Introduction to Service Data Objects (IBM developerWorks)
Bertrand Portier and Frank Budinsky introduce Service Data Objects on IBM's developerWorks. "Many Java developers are skeptical about how heterogeneous data can be accessed uniformly, and have been disappointed in the various programming frameworks that propose to solve the problem. In this article, Java developers Bertrand Portier and Frank Budinsky introduce you to next-generation data programming with Service Data Objects (SDO)."
Unit Test Your Struts Application (O'ReillyNet)
Lu Jian introduces StrutsUT on O'Reilly. "Consistent unit testing is an essential part of development, but web applications aren't necessarily well-suited to unit testing--how to you validate the "correctness" of a returned stream of text or HTML? Lu Jian has an answer in the form of StrutsUT, a Cactus-based library for unit testing Struts web apps."
Struts Menu 2.3 Released (SourceForge)
Version 2.3 of Struts Menu, a web menuing framework for JSP and Struts based applications, has been announced. "This release's major feature is the complete de-coupling from Struts - so that no struts.jar is required in the classpath anymore. Of course, if you have it in there, it's used as before."
Perl
This Week on Perl 6
The September 28, 2004 edition of This Week on Perl 6 is online with the latest Perl 6 discussion topics.
PHP
PHP 5.0.2 released
Version 5.0.2 of PHP has been released. "This is a maintenance release that in addition to many non-critical bug fixes, addresses a problem with GPC input processing. All Users of PHP 5 are encouraged to upgrade to this release as soon as possible."
PostScript
GPL Ghostscript 8.15
Version 8.15 of GPL Ghostscript, a PostScript interpreter, has been announced. "This release includes many bug fixes over the previous AFPL Ghostscript 8.14 release, improved font rendering, and offers significantly better PDF generation and handling over GPL 8.01. We recommend upgrading to all our free users."
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The September 29, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL is available with a new collection of Python language article links.
Ruby
Alexander Kellett Announces Rubydium (KDE.News)
KDE.News looks at Rubydium. "Now, another KDE developer has announced Rubydium, his efforts to bring Just-In-Time optimisations to the Ruby runtime. Could Ruby become a serious contender for KDE application development?"
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
The September 27, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL is out with the week's Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML
XMP Lowdown (O'Reilly)
Bob DuCharme reviews XMP on O'Reilly. "The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a specification describing RDF-based data and storage models for metadata about documents in any format. The specification includes information about embedding XMP in text files such as HTML and SVG/XML; image formats such as JPEG, TIFF, and GIF; and Adobe formats such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat files."
Introduction to Device Independence (O'Reilly)
Peter Mikhalenko discusses device independent browsing issues via XML on O'Reilly. "The mission of the Device Independence activity of the W3C is to avoid fragmentation of the Web into spaces that are accessible only from certain types of devices. The goal of the Device Independence Activity is to develop ways for future web content and applications to be authored, generated, or adapted for a better user experience when delivered via many device types."
Cross Assemblers
GNU PIC Utilities updates
The GNU PIC Utilities project (gputils) has released version 0.12.4 with bug fixes. Also: "We have started an effort to fix bugs in gputils COD files. The purpose is to improve compatibility with other tools."
Yet Another PicoBlaze Assembler (gEDA)
Stephen Williams has announced a new cross-assembler for the PicoBlaze FPGA chips. "I anticipate my own possible need for a PicoBlaze (Xilinx) assembler written in C, so I made a start. This is really only a few hours of work, but I've got a shell going, that just needs to be fleshed out."
Miscellaneous
Devhelp 0.9.2 announced
Version 0.9.2 of Devhelp, an API documentation browser for GNOME, is out. "This release adds three new translations (nb, gu, mk), it also features updates to 11 other translations. Nickolay V. Shmyrev sent a patch to support searching for sub strings, for example "gtk new" will give you all gtk constructors. Johan Svedberg was kind enough to send a patch for adding accelerators for back and forward."
XPlanner 0.6.2 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0.6.2 of XPlanner has been announced. "XPlanner is a web-based project planning and tracking tool for eXtreme Programming (XP) teams. XPlanner is implemented using Java, JSP, and Struts, and MySQL (user contributed support for other databases). XPlanner 0.6.2 provide many improvements and bug fixes including sortable tables, object ID quick queries, improved page printing (image-based progress bars), improved interfaces (history, role editing, time entry, iterations, and developer/customer tasks), dynamic attribute support for enhanced SOAP integration, and contributed functionality for NTLM authentication and WackoWiki-compatible text formatting."
Programming Language Popularity
David N. Welton crunched some statistics and wrote the results up in his paper Programming Language Popularity. Take a look to see how your favorite language rates. "We examine four sources of information. First, the raw number of results found with Google's search engine. We also look at dollars per click information gleaned from an online advertising service (Overture). In other words, how much it costs you, the advertiser, per click for ads placed with search terms such as java consulting or perl training. In addition, to look at the open source community's take on the situation, we look at projects registered with freshmeat. We also use the Craig's List (http://www.craigslist.org) job search board as a source for rough job statistics."
Statistical programming with R (IBM developerWorks)
David Mertz and Brad Huntting look at R on IBM's developerWorks. "In the first of a three-part series, David and Brad introduce you to R, a rich statistical environment, released as free software. It includes a programming language, an interactive shell, and extensive graphing capability. What's more, R comes with a spectacular collection of functions for mathematical and statistical manipulations -- with still more capabilities available in optional packages."
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