JXForms is an implementation of a subset of the XForms standard embedded within Cocoon.
Author: Jeff Potts
Cocoon book didn’t cut it
I saw a Cocoon book at Borders this weekend but I decided not to get it. It didn’t cover 2.1. I did work through the doc and a couple of the how-to’s. They didn’t go as deep as I wanted. Of course, if you just want to transform XML into HTML and PDF, there’s not much to it. The continuations stuff looks more meaty.
Xindice XML database
Installed Xindice as a standalone program so I could use it for other stuff rather than using the version built-in to Cocoon. I moved all of my apache stuff so that there weren’t any spaces in the directory names, but my Documentum stuff still left spaces in my classpath. Rather than update my classpath to use the no-space version of the directory names, I updated the Xindice bat files to put the classpath variable in qutoes. That worked.
Lenya WCM
Tried getting Lenya going tonight. I didn’t have any luck with the binary build so I went with the source build. That helped. Word to the wise, though. The Lenya site says it requires Cocoon 2.1.2. It looks like it has to be exactly 2.1.2 not 2.1.2 or higher.
I tried Lenya 1.2rc2 with Cocoon 2.1.4 and it didn’t work. It looks like that version of Lenya is expecting xercesImpl-2.5.0 rather than 2.6.1 which is what Cocoon 2.1.4 comes with. I updated the Lenya Ant build XML file to use the newer version of Xerces but Lenya choked on it when it tried to come up
Bash scripting help
Cocoon 2.1.4
I downloaded Cocoon 2.1.4 recently. I hadn’t looked at it in at least a year, maybe two. Tonight I got the chance to get it up and running. Man, has it come a long way! I don’t know enough about it yet but it seems very powerful. (I am easily impressed by the slick demos). I sort of got the same tingly feeling I got when I first installed Zope. Cocoon is much more XML-centric, though. It’s also got Apache Axis built-in so it is web services ready. There are many other built-in Apache projects that add to its power but they are too numerous to mention here.
Here are a couple of links…
— What is it: http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/
— Features: http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/features.html
— Lenya CMS: http://cocoon.apache.org/lenya/
and some of the OOTB samples I thought were cool…
— All of the form processing framework samples (JXForms, Woody)
— XML:DB
— SVG, PDF, JPEG, and PNG on-the-fly generation (Batik, FOP)
— Web services (SOAP and Axis)
— Lucene search engine
— xMIDI (just for fun)
— Linotype blog example, although I had problems getting it to run
If you have the time or the inclination, download Cocoon and look through the samples. The build process is paineless. You don’t even need Tomcat to play with it because it embeds its own servlet container (Jetty).
In the early days of Cocoon I remember the install being sketchy and the samples library being pretty lame. You should see it now. Your head will start spinning.
Cocoon seems powerful but also complex. I’ve only scratched the surface but I’ve seen enough to want to learn more.
XML search servers
Lightweight XML search servers, part 2. After looking at my implementation, John Merrells, the creator of DB XML, wrote to ask why I was using the libxml2 XPath feature to search within documents returned by DB XML XPath queries. Didn’t I know that DB XML offered a document-level XPath query function, as well as a database-level one? Heh. Actually, I hadn’t known. … [Jon’s Radio]
MySQL use expanding within Sabre
MySQL Profits From Open Source. Linux is still the most famous open-source app, but database software using the same model is getting some play. MySQL is giving established software firms a run for their money. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
From the article…
While open-source applications are most closely associated with poorly funded startups, MySQL’s customer list also includes large firms. Its current users include Yahoo, Google, Caterpillar, UPS and travel reservation processor Sabre Holdings, which began a significant shift to MySQL in July.
“While we can definitely show cost reductions in the millions of dollars, it’s not simply a matter of licensing costs,” said Alan Walker, vice president of Sabre Labs, the research-and-development arm of Sabre Holdings. Claiming to process 40 percent of the world’s travel reservations, Sabre Holdings began using MySQL on a discount-fare search feature, Walker said, and now plans to expand its use throughout the company.
Go, MySQL, go!
Blogging for Business
Blogging for Business – 37 Signals. 37 Signals are a web design and usability firm based in Chicago. They’ve got a good prezzy introducing blogs, discussing blogging for business, and covering blogs as a business. They call Blogs “tiny but mighty cms”. Take a look: Blogging for Business… [cms~wire]
From the 37 Signals article…
Businesses are starting to use blogs internally to share knowledge, disseminate information across the entire organization, and manage projects. Some advantages of using internal blogs include:
- An archive of contributions if an employee leaves
- Central spot for communication instead of email here, IM there
- Written record of who said what, approvals, comments, etc.
- Central location eases bandwidth requirements
- Central location for project assets (logos, fonts, documentation)
This is a really good article with many links to helpful resources, particularly if you are looking to use blogs within your company.
Steve Earle Bio
Finished Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of Steve Earle, by Lauren St. John, a couple of weekends ago. Man, I knew the guy had had some hard times (just listen to his lyrics) but this gives new meaning to “rock bottom”. The incredible part of the story to me is that he actually lived through it and is now making some of his best art, ever. We came amazingly close to never knowing more than a couple of album’s worth of Steve Earle. St. John kept me involved in the story, but at times, the littany of producers, managers, label execs, and legendary artists were a little much for an industry-outsider.