« February 2002 | Main | April 2002 »

March 22, 2002

Chapter 8 - A Developer's

Chapter 8 - A Developer's Look at the Cocoon Architecture


In this chapter we dive into the Cocoon architecture from a developer perspective. This chapter covers Avalon topics such as the component manager and component lifecycles are explained. The different interfaces Cocoon components can implement are detailed, as is SAX event handling in pipelines. Other topics include StreamPipelines, EventPipelines and SourceResolving. This is the "nerd" chapter :-)

Posted by Matthew at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

VoicesInMyBlog I have set up

VoicesInMyBlog


I have set up an additional blog on blogger. As I cannot maintain my Radio weblog from home - I can use VIMB to blog additional stuff during weekends and when on vacation. Like next week. Back after Easter! And until then VIMB!

Posted by Matthew at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2002

My next book (well sort

My next book (well sort of)


Ok, Biz points out that some "Matthew" is checking his chapter. That's me. All is revealed.

Posted by Matthew at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

Per-Olof starts a thread on

Per-Olof starts a thread on the IDE's being used to develop with Cocoon


Carsten announces a code freeze so he can get the next version of Cocoon out


 

Posted by Matthew at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon GetTogether at CeBIT Yesterday

Cocoon GetTogether at CeBIT


Yesterday I posted a short summary of the Cocoon GetTogether we hosted at CeBIT. Around 12 people came and we had some very interesting discussions. I hope to post more details soon.

Posted by Matthew at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

Book nearing completion! Yep. Tomorrow

Book nearing completion!


Yep. Tomorrow we will be turning in the last of the chapters to our development editor!!!

Posted by Matthew at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon Weblog gets "noticed" At

Cocoon Weblog gets "noticed"


At the beginning of this week, Dave mentioned my Cocoon Weblog on weblogs.com: "Radio seems to attract developers. I'm quite happy about that. A few weeks ago some Cocoon guys were talking about crushing UserLand". Now there's a Cocoon weblog that uses Radio."


Now just for the record: I wrote this about the "crushing" thread. And then hacked the XML-RPC Api into Cocoon for a presentation.

Posted by Matthew at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2002

Gerhard starts a discussion on

Gerhard starts a discussion on whether Cocoon needs a patch manager. Patch Adams?

Posted by Matthew at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 7 - Cocoon News

Chapter 7 - Cocoon News Portal - Extended Version


This chapter builds on what we presented on the previous pages and builds a news portal that includes a database and uses forms to allow the user to configure her portal.

Posted by Matthew at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

Off to CeBIT tomorrow where

Off to CeBIT tomorrow where we will hopefully be seeing some other Cocoon based solutions and meeting some of the people who are working with the software.

Posted by Matthew at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2002

Matthew goes International! My talk

Matthew goes International!


My talk on "Building XML Portals with Cocoon" has been accepted for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in July. This will be a great chance to present the work we have been doing and perhaps plug the book. Anyone else going?

Posted by Matthew at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2002

Carsten starts a vote on

Carsten starts a vote on where sitemap components should be defined, in the cocoon.xconf or in the sitemap.xmap. Let's make it as easy as possible for the sitemap author!


Carsten starts the release process for the next Cocoon version.


Dims tells us about a Cocoon 2 tutorial over on IBM's DeveloperWorks.

Posted by Matthew at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2002

Radio Community Server Dave started

Radio Community Server


Dave started spreading the Radio Community Server this weekend. Although I had signed up to set up a test group I am currently bogged down doing other stuff. But it is interesting to see the new communities come online. Bing!

Posted by Matthew at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

Xerces 2.0.1 makes its way

Xerces 2.0.1 makes its way into the next Cocoon version


Andreas moves cocooncenter.de over to cocooncenter.org.


 

Posted by Matthew at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 6 - A User's

Chapter 6 - A User's Look at the Cocoon Architecture


This chapter explores the Cocoon architecture from a User perspective. It details such things as the configuration files sitemap.xmap and cocoon.xconf. The chapter also covers Avalon, Logging with LogKit, Action-Sets, Protocols, Content Aggregation and much much more (a book in itself really).

Posted by Matthew at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2002

XML Databases Kimbro points us

XML Databases


Kimbro points us to this article on XML in Oracle and DB2. Looks as though the playing field on XML databases is set to become crowded. Which is good news for Cocoon.

Posted by Matthew at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)

Xopus Interesting discussions and news

Xopus


Interesting discussions and news about providing Cocoon with an XML editor. Xopus seems to be geared up to become something we need to take a close look at as the next version will run in IE and Netscape.

Posted by Matthew at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2002

Blogging from the Bog Usernum

Blogging from the Bog


Usernum 1014: ""You can't take a web page with you to the bathroom"."


Adam Curry reminds me that I can do that as well. Not that I think you really want to see a photo of it. But having a WiFi at home and iBooking it from the Bog (no 'l' in that word) is way cool. Just don't let your children see you doing it.

Posted by Matthew at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

Music Box Got a comment

Music Box


Got a comment on the value of a song piece - which I will pass on as it is spot on:


The other thing you forget is the physical pleasure to have a nice box and a great booklet. Love Handle


Yep. So true. Even if the music were available for free. People would still buy the CD. And - all the more reason for record companies to add more value to the CD (additional lyrics, artwork, promos, nicer boxes)!

Posted by Matthew at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

New Cocoon based site Claas

New Cocoon based site


Claas Thiele announces a new Cocoon 2.0RC1 based site up here. It is a German site.

Posted by Matthew at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

Pressplay I hadn't read this

Pressplay


I hadn't read this when I wrote the piece on free music yesterday. But it fits the picture. Doomed.

Posted by Matthew at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 5 - Cocoon News

Chapter 5 - Cocoon News Portal - Entry Version


Throughout the book we will be building up a Cocoon based news portal using what is currently available in the Cocoon distribution (not the newly donated portal components which are as yet in the scratchpad). This first version presents a very simple version of a news portal using what we learned in Chapter 4. The portal allows you to access news feeds that are fetched from an online provider and rendered in HTML or PDF

Posted by Matthew at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)

Nicola announces POI serialization code

Nicola announces POI serialization code committed to Cocoon CVS. Read more about POI here.


Jacek posts some clarification on the status of the XSLTC code. Not that it seems any clearer to me after reading this.


 

Posted by Matthew at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2002

How much is a song

How much is a song worth?


Lots of things going on in P2P land. Only having a 56K dialup at home keeps me away from all of that - although I did try limewire on my iBook a couple of times...sheesh just too slow.


So anyway, on the one hand we have the P2P networks where you can get music for nothing (if you have the bandwidth and can pay the online charges) and on the other hand we have the music companies trying to sell the CD for lots of $$. Actually a single song on a CD costs around 1$ (give or take).


Thought experiment


Imagine a record company brings out the newest CD of some popular artist for 5$ (that's right the whole CD). Will that CD still be swapped on Gnutella? What if the CD costs 1$? I bet there would be no difference to today.


It is not about the price of music, it's about the ease (I don't have to go to the record store) and the sport (the collection syndrome - "I gotta have that"), and the fact that it costs money (however little).


And the answer?


The music companies need to understand that they can never compete if they charge for the service and music. They should be setting up their own P2P networks where registered users can exchange the companies music for free. They should then be looking after the people that use their P2P network. Forming a community. Setting up an easy to use client-app that provides a 1-stop link to buying the music the user is currently swapping, add meta-data information that allows the client-app to provide addtional links to merchandizing, tickets to concerts, DVDs ...


Just a thought.

Posted by Matthew at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Prompted by a question on

Prompted by a question on the cocoon-users list.


In addition to the components we donated for authentication and portal a couple of weeks ago there are also a few additional "things" there that may make life easier for you if you use them. Check out the document sunshine-contexts.xml in the scratchpad to see how you can store and retrieve data to and from individual contexts that reside inside a session. You can also access the request parameters directly as XML, create temporary contexts ... and lots more.

Posted by Matthew at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

One week of 3 children

One week of 3 children with stomach flu (gastroenteritis to you and me k-parents) - throwing up each night and all the other "nice" things. I have had enough! And need some sleep!


Sorry - had to get that off.

Posted by Matthew at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2002

Good morning Dave Dave often

Good morning Dave


Dave often starts off his weblog with a "good morning". Today I feel like writing:


Hello, Dave. Shall we continue our game?


in reply.

Posted by Matthew at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon article (German) online An

Cocoon article (German) online


An article Carsten and I wrote for the German IT weekly comuterwoche is now online. It is in German.

Posted by Matthew at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)

Navigational Aids Sam lists need-a-cake

Navigational Aids


Sam lists need-a-cake as a navigational aid for people who can't remember his number (which by the way is: 0101679). Actually that brings up an interesting point for people using Radio and not using the ftp upload to an alternate site (like I am). In the midst of all the blogs, there are beacons allowing us to home in on the logs we can't remember the number of. Perhaps Radio needs an alternate naming scheme? And Sam: sam-ruby.com is still available (as I write this). At least nic.com thinks so.

Posted by Matthew at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

You can subscribe to an

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this weblog by clicking on the icon on the left. That's if you're using Radio. Below that is a link for the RSS version of the page. Subscription is then up to you :-).


Ugo is busy on the Cocoon blogging theme over here. While I am somewhat sceptical as to why we would want YABP (Yet Another Blogging Platform) I do think Cocoon needs more in the way of writeback components. We based a slim-line CMS on Cocoon and used just the normal edit field in HTML as the entry field for XML - which is way uncool. So anything better than that - if it runs in IE and Netscape would be great.

Posted by Matthew at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

Vadim posts on how to

Vadim posts on how to install Cocoon in Tomcat 4.0.3 here.


Steven Sedlmeyer is looking for large (20-25 M pageview/month) Cocoon installations.


Torsten proposes a separate user-components.xconf for additional components. This would remove the need to always add them to cocoon.xconf. This is a good idea and will help upgrades etc.!

Posted by Matthew at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

sunRise tutorial Some corrections in

sunRise tutorial


Some corrections in over the weekend. I think it should all be there now.

Posted by Matthew at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2002

New Cocoon based site up

New Cocoon based site up


Patrick Montier announces a new Cocoon based web site. Go see it in action here.


Roadmap


Stefano gives a heads-up on what is currently going on in Cocoon-dev land. I would have also liked to have seen the portal and authentication stuff mentioned :-). There is lots of room for improvement and enhancements there.


XML Updating


Robert brings up some interesting issues on updating XML in a database. We do it in much the same way. Use the FileGenerator to read and custom actions to write. Guido will be talking about that in connection with Xindice and Tamino here.

Posted by Matthew at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

Coming together Strange how things

Coming together


Strange how things happen sometime. Last week I read Sam. Today I read Jon. Most days I read Dave and Doc. Meanwhile I started re-reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. The more I get involved in Weblogging and read what these people are writing...the more I find myself seeing what could be possible with this stuff in areas I work in.


WYSIWYG Blogging+Navigator Links+RSS Syndication+Referrer Logs+FTP Upstreaming==Topic-Oriented Web of Smart People


Inside corporations, outside corporations, networking customer and vendors together.....enabling conversations.

Posted by Matthew at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2002

Cocoon in HP software Interested

Cocoon in HP software


Interested in seeing where Cocoon is being used? Take a look at this (page 3). Or refer to this.

Posted by Matthew at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

A weekly list of links to

A weekly list of links to the Cocoon-users and Cocoon-dev mailing-lists is being maintained over here. Is is it a blog - or "just" a normal web site?

Posted by Matthew at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon Weblog started I decided

Cocoon Weblog started


I decided to start a Cocoon Weblog - look for the link on the left. I have no idea yet what will go there. Probably stuff from the mailing-lists filtered by yours truly and annotated from this desk. Hop on over and take a look.

Posted by Matthew at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

Sam Ruby's Radio Weblog: "As

Sam Ruby's Radio Weblog: "As I get links to these and other pictures taken at the interop event, I'll link to them here."


What happened to Sam's camera then? Looks as though fun was had at the interop - and I would have wished for more ongoing blogging from the event -stuff like this:  Keith looks to his right and addresses the person at the far corner of the table with a "Hey CapeClear!" and another technical question. At which point, the representative from The Mind Electric responds that he isn't CapeClear. Unphased Keith turns to the left and repeats his greeting and question again.


Great stuff!

Posted by Matthew at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

Tutorial updated The sunRise tutorial

Tutorial updated


The sunRise tutorial has been updated.

Posted by Matthew at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

Here we go Thought I

Here we go


Thought I would start a Cocoon Weblog going. Let's just see where it takes us.

Posted by Matthew at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Chapter 4 - Putting Cocoon

Chapter 4 - Putting Cocoon to Work


After installing Cocoon in chapter 3, we now introduce a wide range of subjects that will help put the basic Cocoon concepts to work for us. Here are some of the themes:


Posted by Matthew at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)