The Windows Definitive Guide to NoSQL

First of all let’s correctly define NoSQL.

Currently, it is a RDBMs anti-pattern, some people are trying to use the old “not only SQL” definition, but I prefer the “non relational” instead.

There are of course more detailed definitions. For an easy understanding, any modern, non-relational, schema-free, web-scalable, with easy replication support, that don’t use SQL language to interface with it, will fit in the NoSQL field.

There are quite a few categories of NoSQL databases, grouped by characteristics like: Columns, Documents, Tuples, Key Values, Graphs, and others.

I have been working with relational databases associated with ECMs in applications almost all my professional life. When I hear from NoSQL databases a few years ago, the Documents category sparks my imagination.

Two of them have become trends in the field: CouchDB and MongoDB.

Being strictly honest, I have a predilection for MongoDB.

Here are a few reasons:

• It is Powerful and Flexible
• It has Collections (slightly similar to tables)
• It is Easy Scaling (automatic Sharding)
• It uses TCPIP (amazing performance) and finally 
• It full supports Windows from the very beginning

In the “Ultimate Guide to NoSQL in Windows”, I will show how to get them both working easily.

HTML Colors and the Shadows of Gray

Do you remember of the old monochromatic times?

In another recently experienced situation, I feel like in a "back to the past" movie.

Let me show you how that feeling arises:

Working for the Enterprise, there is always a chosen hardware and of course a chosen development environment. I have already posted about customer's decision around being IE6 the standard browser to be considered when developing applications in the previous post.

Considering the hardware, I have recently involved in a situation where the chosen hardware simply didn't support the chosen software options.

We have basically two models of PCs coming from a big enterprise supplier. One of them have an on board video controller (let's call it the X320 model), and the other an off board more specialized video controller (this one could be the X330 model).

Our principal customer site consists mainly of shades of red and gray, but the problem appears more easily with a variety of different tones of gray.

The question is: using the customer's standard CSS plenty of gray tones, many of those tones are simply ignored by X320's video controller, but appear fine when using the X330's one.

This situation brings me back to the old "safe web color" time, and proves me that in the "safe way"; there are no many safe gray options.

If you have any question or need more information, I have compiled information about HTML Colors in general and specifically about gray scale here.

The final word is "Be careful about Gray Shades".

Who cares about Javascript, Jquery and Prototype?

Well, I care about them all of course.

But I have recently experienced a situation where if I was in a more up to date development environment, none of them will surpass simple HTML and CSS.

Let me show how that application should work:

• First of all, unfortunately, we need to use tables in these apps.
• We have a set of images in a Thumbnail.
• When one of the Thumbnail images is clicked a corresponding centered larger image will be displayed at the bottom of the page.
• I have defined a fixed width of this larger image in 750px.
• I was counting with the height being automatically and proportionally set considering that width.

Everything works fine in all browsers, except when images are narrow then that preset limit.

In that case the centered larger image becomes distorted. The narrow the image compared with the preset width the more obvious becomes the distortion.

You can see an example of how it not properly works here.

On the other hand the solution to that was amazingly simple. Simple as 2 lines of CSS code!

You can see that working option here.

But there is a problem… As always that simple amazing solution doesn’t work on IE6 (in fact it doesn’t work in IE at all). If you are testing the above example in IE, try the last image and see what happens.

Believe it or not, many customers around (at least here in Brazil) are using that infamous browser as the “official” one, and developers should base their web applications on it.

That is only one of the many situations where you should care about Javascript, Jquery and Prototype. They will help you a lot.

Since this is not so complicated, Jquery and Prototype are not necessary. Just a couple of Javascript functions have solved the problem.

Here is a working solution tested against IE6, IE8 and some real modern Browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome.

I would like to see some Jquery and Prototype alternatives to get the same, on an even simpler solution.

Peek-a-Boo (Pik a Ruby)

I have seen so many people around talking about testing different Ruby versions in Linux and OS/X.

What about using different Ruby versions in Windows?

I have been doing the job manually since the beginning, but there is a cool alternative.

Pik

It is a Multi-Ruby Manager for Windows.

A clever solution and there is extremely simple to get it working.

Let’s see:

	Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
	(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
	C:\Documents and Settings\Ricardo>ruby -v
	ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32]
	C:\Documents and Settings\Ricardo>path
	PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;D:\Ruby19\bin;
	C:\Documents and Settings\Ricardo>d:
	D:\>cd ruby19
	D:\Ruby19>gem install pik
	----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	* If you're upgrading from a version <= 0.1.1, you'll want to delete the pik.bat file
	from all of your ruby versions. Gem uninstall should do the trick.
	* Install pik to a location that's in your path, but someplace other than your
	ruby\bin dir
	If you're upgrading from a more recent version, pik_install will overwrite the older files as needed.
	>path
	PATH=C:\tools\;C:\ruby\186-p368-mingw32\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS
	>pik_install C:\tools
	* If this is a first-time install, add all the versions of ruby that you want to use with pik
	>pik add
	Adding: 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2009-03-31 patchlevel 368) [i386-mingw32]
	Located at: c:/ruby/186-p368-mingw32/bin
	>pik add C:\ruby\IronRuby-091\bin
	Adding: 091: IronRuby 0.9.1.0 on .NET 2.0.0.0
	Located at: C:/ruby/IronRuby-091/bin
	>pik add C:\ruby\jruby-1.4.0RC1\bin
	Adding: 140: jruby 1.4.0RC1 (ruby 1.8.7 patchlevel 174) (2009-09-30 80c263b) (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM 1.6.0_14) [x86-java]
	Located at: C:/ruby/jruby-1.4.0RC1/bin
	----------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Successfully installed highline-1.5.2
	Successfully installed pik-0.2.6
	2 gems installed
	Installing ri documentation for highline-1.5.2...
	Installing ri documentation for pik-0.2.6...
	Updating class cache with 1080 classes...
	Installing RDoc documentation for highline-1.5.2...
	Installing RDoc documentation for pik-0.2.6...
	Could not find main page README.rdoc
	D:\Ruby19>pik_install C:\WINDOWS\system32
	Thank you for using pik.
	Installing to C:\WINDOWS\system32
	cp D:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/pik-0.2.6/bin/../tools/pik.bat C:\WINDOWS\system32
	mkdir -p C:\WINDOWS\system32/pik
	cp D:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/pik-0.2.6/bin/../tools/pik/pik_runner.exe
	C:\WINDOWS\system32/pik
	pik is installed
	D:\Ruby19>pik list
	creating C:\Documents and Settings\Ricardo\.pik
	** Adding: 191: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32]
	Located at: D:\Ruby19\bin
	191: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32] *
	D:\Ruby19>cd..
	D:\>dir ruby*.
	Volume in drive D is Programas
	Volume Serial Number is 04F0-8E6D
	Directory of D:\
	28-Feb-2009 15:06 <DIR> Ruby186-111
	03-Jan-2009 09:33 <DIR> Ruby186-287
	29-May-2010 16:15 <DIR> Ruby186-398
	22-May-2010 20:15 <DIR> Ruby19
	0 File(s) 0 bytes
	4 Dir(s) 10,305,060,864 bytes free
	D:\>pik add d:\Ruby186-111\bin
	** Adding: 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
	Located at: d:\Ruby186-111\bin
	D:\>pik add d:\Ruby186-287\bin
	** Adding: 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i386-mswin32]
	Located at: d:\Ruby186-287\bin
	D:\>pik add d:\Ruby186-398\bin
	** Adding: 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]
	Located at: d:\Ruby186-398\bin
	D:\>pik list
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i386-mswin32]
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]
	191: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32] *
	D:\>pik sw 186
	Select which Ruby you want:
	1. 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]
	2. 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
	3. 186: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i386-mswin32]
	? 2
	D:\>pik list
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32] *
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i386-mswin32]
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]
	191: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32]
	D:\>ruby -v
	ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
	D:\>path
	PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;d:\Ruby186-111\bin;
	D:\>pik sw 191
	D:\>path
	PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\system32;D:\Ruby19\bin;
	D:\>pik list
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i386-mswin32]
	186: ruby 1.8.6 (2010-02-04 patchlevel 398) [i386-mingw32]
	191: ruby 1.9.1p378 (2010-01-10 revision 26273) [i386-mingw32] *
	D:\>

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