I was amazed how many open source advocates at the recent OSCON conference sported iPhones and Macs – notoriously closed systems.  The MacBook Air raffle generated serious excitement.  How many of these open source advocates are motivated more by Microsoft bashing than true open systems?  I guess we’ll find out if this will draw them off into a purely open source solution ;-).

Check out this little rough (and rather noisy) video I put together of a conversation from ZendCon 2008.  Shankar observes the trend towards tying PHP applications together using Web Services, something for which the WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP is ideally suited.  And we just announced the 2.0 release!

Maybe it's just me and my Vista, or my version of the Java Runtime (1.5.0_10) but anytime I get an iTunes upgrade (such as the recent version 8 which I just installed), the WSO2 Mashup Server fails to launch.  Hate that!  Now I don't know much about Java and environment variables, but here's what I do to solve this problem:

1. Right click on "Computer" and get properties, then select "Advanced System Settings...".  Or, open up the Control Panel and search for "environment variables" and select the "Edit the system environment variables" task.
2. Click on "Environment Variables."
3. Double click on the "CLASSPATH" variable and find the segment (separated by ':') that contains QTJava.  Delete this path segment and close all the windows.

The Mashup Server should now launch fine.  Now back to work...

Keith has created a nice REST demo to show how WSDL 2.0 can be used to describe a RESTful interaction, and posted the resulting mashup here.  This is in response to an old post he found from Stefan Tilkov.

One of the area Stefan explores is the difference between the conceptual models of "operations" versus "resources":

It seems to me that the right thing would be to get rid of the operations (or map them to the HTTP verbs, which is essentially the same thing as getting rid of them).

Keith indeed mapped each combination of "verb", "uri template" into a WSDL operation.  So what Stefan describes as "GET on /customer/{id} - get customer details" Keith maps to a "getCustomerDetails" operation which takes an "id" parameter.  I think this is a very reasonable mapping, and one that looks a lot like the "getCustomerDetails(id)" construct which is present in some form in every programming language.

I don't call this "getting rid of the operations" either, if by that is meant writing a WSDL that has only four operations (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE). I would instead say that an operation encapsulates the combination of the http method, the http location uri pattern or template, and the input and output types into a construct that maps well to familiar programming constructs and provides a level of abstraction that can prove valuable (e.g. the uri location can change, security can be applied, even the transport protocols can change without perturbing the development experience).

Having a WSDL 2.0 description of the service in terms of operations also had the beneficial effect of documenting which combinations of verb/uri template are supported, with the effect of also documenting which combinations aren't supported.  Stefan had to notate these as "unused" in his diagram, important because some of the combinations aren't obvious (why can't a customer be deleted?)

It still baffles me why there isn't more demand for WSDL 2.0 and its REST description features.  Hopefully Keith's post helps demonstrate the value of this technology.

I've been trying to refrain from political commentary lately - hard to stop when that geyser opens.  But I did notice something that deserves more attention and I haven't seen others talking about it much.

The Republican convention was full of the phrase "small town," e.g. Sarah Palin's statement that "we grow good people in our small towns."  Which seems factually accurate (she's not saying some bad people don't also come out of small towns, nor that good people don't come out of big cities either.)  In fact, given how self-evident the statement is on its face, what is she trying to convey?

Is it something like "family values?"  When the 2004 election again fell surprisingly to Bush, the pollsters claimed that "family values" pushed the undecideds towards Bush.  That was my only comfort - who can be against "family values."  Families support and love each other, build communities to help each other, avoid criminal behavior such as stealing and killing, and even try to be as honest with each other and in their community dealings as possible.  What's not to like there?

But it didn't take long for me to realize that "family values" for most of those voters was a code word, for opposing gay marriage and abortion.  That is, it's not about how well you live your family life, it's about judging and interfering with other people's families and the tough decisions they make.  In other words, for me "family values" in the hands of the Republican messaging machine has become just another cynical abuse of the language for propaganda purposes.

So what does "small town" mean when uttered by a Republican?  I live in a small town.  It means working with a community of people who aren't self-selected to be just like you (as you so often can in a bigger pond).  It means working together to ensure all boats rise.  It means enjoying simple things, like attending lame-o July 4th parades because it's an opportunity to interact with others in the town.  It means helping other people's kids as well as your own.

John Stewart was pretty quick with a segment trying to see what "small town" meant to Republican delegates.  The ones he showed were pretty insightful.  Those that do more thinking than just "me like small town, you like small town, me like you" seem to mean mostly that "everyone goes to the same Christian church" and "gays are in the closet."  Clearly meanness can emit from small town America too, along with the good things.  Don't be fooled into supporting meanness under the shiny "small town" seal of goodness.

The term also arises with the ascendancy of Sarah Palin, which suggests another purpose - it's an attempt to flip the liability of her lack of experience into a positive.  I guess in conjunction with the coded meaning above, she's trying to say "I don't need national or international experience because I oppose homosexuality."  Just the kind of claptrap the Republican base laps up with brains turned to power-saver mode.

Don't get me started on Palin's use of "community organizer" as a dirty word.  Shouldn't that label apply to every Chamber of Commerce member in every small town across America?  I'm afraid to find out what they mean by "charity"...