Shiny Red Apples

This week I have been working on the support site administration side, updating it section by section to make it easier to do things, and have just automated a feature that logs database table changes.

This will be merged with the project once a user access level feature has been implemented in the Administration Tool, and allows any query to be watched and logged with one call to the database class.

Logging a query will then automatically insert the changes made (insert, update, or delete) to a database table in the logging database, with a timestamp of the changes, and obviously logs who made those changes.

This provides the benefit for a store administrator to see who did what and when, and with filtering options, easily allows to see changes made to specific modules, changes made by a particular user, and changes made between a specific date period.

The benefit is not only for store administrators though, as when another person has access to the administrator log, they will also see the changes made to modules they themselves only have access to.

All this to increase team awareness 8)

After installing Suse 9.3 on a spare partition I had, I have decided to move to it from Arch Linux for my general purpose needs (server, development, ..). I did this the past few days while playing with it and tinkering it to my needs, and am quite pleased with the final results.

I did use Suse 9.1 before jumping to Arch Linux, and made the jump to Arch Linux to fulfill my bleeding-edge desires back then :-) Those desires changed though with the typical small annoyances that do-it-yourself linux distributions have, and decided to bite on the hype Suse 9.3 had on its release, and now enjoy a comfortable and sleek start up procedure all the way through logging into the KDE desktop.

So far so good! Let’s see how long my desires last this time around, before moving again to another linux distribution 8)

I hope I’ve been doing a good job managing the project since it has been introduced 5 years ago. I think I have, and am really appreciative that a team has been built where, more or less, a common goal exists which we aim to meet together.

.. together with a growing community that also more or less shares those same goals.

I have learned a lot in these 5 years, and hope to have made more right choices than wrong, otherwise I would not be here today still leading the project with great friendships existing in the team and community, and a community that continues to grow and grow and grow. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Pair Networks again for helping us being able to financially manage 2 dedicated servers for the support site. Running the support site is not something a $20/month hosting plan can take care of, and does need its tender loving care to be able to keep the growing community happy.

The team reorganization occured last week and has just been officially announced to the community. The new changes this brings in also brings in excitement to the team due to our new focus being able to come true.

What has also been recently announced is the new PHP 4.1 minimum requirement, the implementation of the template structure into the Catalog side, and the removal of the session class.

The fact is, we have not really been happy with what PHP has been able to provide, and now that PHP 5 has been released with it’s focus on “enterprise features”, have decided to discontinue using PHP altogether and to use a real enterprise friendly solution instead, and that is Java Server Pages (JSP).

This move only brings in great advancement to the project, moving from the low-to-middle segment of the e-commerce field to the high-level playing field, and allows us to truely provide a powerful Object-Oriented (OO) solution taking advantage of cross-platform JavaBeans components for the processing logic we have currently encumbered in PHP.

A Preview Release of our work will be available in the coming days, and the defined milestone path for the first stable release will be finalized shortly thereafter with the help of the community.

We look forward to migrating the community from PHP to JSP and will provide a list of partnering JSP-enabled web hosting companies soon. Our new partners will gladly assist in transfering product images and database content to the new JSP-enabled web server for free as long osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 1 onwards is currently in use. (Sorry, we were not able to agree to terms with providing support for Preview Release 2.1 store owners)

More information on Java Server Pages can be found here:

http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/

Please note that Java Server Pages are not Java Applets. A quick summary of JSP is found on Sun’s website:

“JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology enables Web developers and designers to rapidly develop and easily maintain, information-rich, dynamic Web pages that leverage existing business systems. As part of the Java technology family, JSP technology enables rapid development of Web-based applications that are platform independent. JSP technology separates the user interface from content generation, enabling designers to change the overall page layout without altering the underlying dynamic content.”

We look forward to moving the osCommerce brandname from an Open Source PHP project to a first class Open Source JSP enterprise platform solution, and look forward to the exciting possibilities the road ahead provides!

(April Fools!)