Compiz, Beryl, and XGL

Well, last night I finally dug into all the eye-candy that is compiz and XGL. After quite an easy install process following a process listed under ubuntuguide.org I had Compiz/XGL up and running in under 20 minutes. Originally it was just Compiz/XGL, which is cool on it's own, but doesn't give a lot in the way of customization. Thats why you need to install the beryl-manager, emerald, and emerald-themes. Once I did this, I was off in eye-candy heaven.

Lucky for me my laptop has a 512MB Geforce 7600 Go in it, so it can take full advantage of this in all it's glory. Once you get used to the different types of navigation, ways to play with your desktop, shortcut keys, and other cool features, it makes playing with your desktop fun again.

As far as practicle, I could see it being very practicle. It allows you a new kind of control over your desktop, and not one desktop, but four. You again are in complete control, no more cluttered, unorganized, Click a bunch of times to get where you need to desktops. It'll have a steep learning curve for the majority of average users out there, but if it's promoted, and pushed, I could see Compiz/XGL leaping into the forefront of next-gen desktops.

I'd post some screenshots, but really, you need video to see this in all it's glory, the best place to see this is



Have fun, and I can't wait until Compiz/XGL is a standard!

Coldfusion with Active Directory

After much hesistation I started making the switch 5 days ago to convert my existing security system on the corporate portal from internal databases to Active Directory through LDAP. My hesistation was mostly due to the fact of limited info on this subject. After 5 days, we've organized or AD structure much better and I am successfully using AD for authentication and corporate structure info, and security authorization.

Coldfusion makes connection to AD through LDAP a snap (no pun intended). Let me just say, if I had of realized that it was this easy 2 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of headaches in the multi-level security area. Now I have the fun task of trying to re-code my components to look at AD rather than internal databases. The good news is that I use frameworks such as Model-Glue, Reactor, and Coldspring, so the overall work required to make it function is minimal, it's more the small things like references and table links that are going to take the time.

To anyone building security-required in a Windows environment, even if in a Linux Environment with an LDAP server, I seriously recommend looking into integration, it could save you bundles of time, especially if someone else in the IT department manages the AD or LDAP server. You'll just have to come to a few basic understandings. ;)

Linux, Reactor Framework and Case Sensitivity

I finally got my linux box up and running with all my server software as it is required. Copied everything from my windows partition to my linux partition and then made an attempt (though futile) to run my development version of our corporate portal. Now comes a major problem that isn't present for Windows, but is present for Linux, case sensitivity.

The reactor framework has saved me bucketloads of time. Most applications these days I use the MG2 framework, and that requires Coldspring and Reactor, both excellent frameworks which save heaps of time in development. However, Reactor on this specific occasion is causing me grief. It generate all the data-dictionary objects correctly so far except for one table I have called Personnel.

I use MSSQL Server 2000 for my databases, and I can connect and query all my tables and views properly. For some reason though, when Reactor generates the data-objects for my Personnel table, it generates them with a lowercase 'p' instead of the required uppercase 'P'. This shouldn't be a problem except when it checks for the existence of the file, it looks for the uppercase version instead of the lowercase version that it created.

I'm now going through the reactor files to try and find the problem spot, this day could get long...

Edit: Found the problem to be with my Reactor.xml configuration file. In windows I could use personnel in my object relation models and windows wouldn't care. But the Reactor.xml config file creates the objects exactly how they are mentioned in this file. So when it went to access the actual file using the table name, it gave a case sensitivity error in Linux. Once I corrected my Reactor.xml file and re-initialized the project, it worked fine.

Lesson learned: don't let a linux newbie near your development environment. ;)