Thursday, March 22, 2007
Which Language Do You Read?
This snapshot was taken from the Himalia's website visitor stats from Europe.
The top-five list is the following:
- France
- Germany
- United Kingdom
- Netherlands
- Belgium
This is a little strange, if you see the Internet Usage in Europe stats:
- Germany 50,471,212
- United Kingdom 37,600,000
- France 30,837,595
- Italy 30,763,940
- Russia 23,700,000
- Spain 19,765,032
- Turkey 16,000,000
- Netherlands 12,060,000
- Poland 11,400,000
- Portugal 7,782,760
- Sweden 6,890,000
- Ukraine 5,278,100
- Belgium 5,100,000
50. Vatican City State 93
So, first conclusion, the Pope is using Internet and as a consequence, the Vatican firewall configuration will be a controversial issue some day ;)
And second, you need to spread the word in different languages if you are planning a global strategy. I think this post helped giving french readers to the website and turning France as the second country in the world-wide Himalia's website visitor list, after USA.
There are post about Himalia written in French, Spanish, English, and now, there's a post written in Lithuanian, but I don't understand anything about them ;)
The point is that there are a lot of people out there that never will know about Himalia just because the read in other languages, and so, we will need help with it :-)
Thursday, March 15, 2007
SQL, the first successful DSL
There is a new wave around the software factories and the domain-specific languages now. However, we have tried specific languages from the very early beginning and along the whole software history: Server languages, Script Languages, Query Languages, etc.
From this point of view, I think that SQL (Structured Query Language) is the most successful DSL in the history.
Why SQL is a DSL?
Just because it's a language designed to solve a specific problem: "to define databases and retrieve information from it".
I think one of the most important things when you are trying to create a language to solve a specific problem is to target a well-defined problem. That is, it should be bounded, focalized and easy to communicate.
Besides, two things could make it the most successful one: to have a lot of people wanting to solve the same problem, and to support a good extensible approach form the beginning.
Who need SQL?
Most of the last 30 years applications need databases. You may think in writing your own code each time, to avoid constrains involved in the SQL and the DBMS, but it would have no sense for most of us if you think in the costs.
Have it got an extensible approach when the model is not enough?
Well, yes and no. Many SQL statements were impossible in the beginning and remained in this state until a few years ago. The model had to be improved year by year.
This is a gold rule in the DSL approach that everyone should understand: you should improve your specific-language while you learn from your specific-problem. Or, what is the same, the language won't be perfect from the first time. The model is stable right now, 37 years after the first approach written by E. Codd.
I think we have learned a lot and new DSL's should take less time to get stable ;)
Labels: DSL Tools, Technology
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Himalia at the Microsoft Architect Forum / Santiago / Chile
Microsoft (through Wilson Pais) invited me to talk in the first Architect Forum of the year in Santiago de Chile.
I also used this opportunity to visit a friend of mine who lives there, Hugo Cortés. I meet him for first time in March 2004 when he come to Montevideo -as a member of Un Techo Para Chile- and helped us to create Un Techo Para Uruguay, a non-governmental organization that help houseless people in my country. I'm outside the organization now (because you can't do everything at the same time), but I really feel as a member of it... technically, I'm one of the founders ;)
Back to the Architect Forum, Alejandro Pacheco made a discussion about the available technologies for the presentation layer. After that, Martín Cabrera introduced Domain-Specific Languages, and showed a mini-example. Then I presented Himalia and finally, Carlos Carminati and Luis Molfino presented their company and what are they doing.
In the picture, from left to right, you can see to Martín Cabrera (Microsoft), Carlos Carminati (d2B), Luis Molfino (d2B), Alejandro Pacheco (Microsoft) and me.
My presentation was specially discussed with the people, so I think they enjoyed it ;) I already know that the Himalia proposal is disrupting, and it's great when people keep thinking about these ideas.
This photo was taken by Luis Molfino, as you can see he's an artist :)
I want to thank you to Martín Cabrera and all the Microsoft Chile team. Surely we will meet again in the near future...
Labels: DSL Tools, Himalia, Talk, Travel, WPF
Saturday, March 03, 2007
New Presentation DSL Designer
One of the first task after the beta release was to redefine the Presentation Model Designer (the one under the "Layout" node in the solution explorer).
It should be intuitive, useful and simpler.
As you can see, we were very uncomfortable with the ease-of-use of the 0.8 version, but it was just the first presentation designer version.
The Presentation Model Designer is also made with the DSL Tools, and in the next released version, will looks something like this.
The new features include:
- . Screen resolution design-time testing. It allows you to change the target screen resolution and see how it looks.
- . Transitions were included in the model itself as arrows... It's far more intuitive!
- . Area control was merged with the area definition in order to make it simpler to understand.
- . Propagation rules were removed. Now you should set the landmarks and/or the propagating child (the model is still using propagation rules, but you don't have to care about it anymore). The landmarks are shown in the diagram, decorating the area with the navigational element icon.
- . You can define visual effects (fx) for any transitions, like in Power Point. This feature will change the world ;)
- . All the diagram decorators can be shown/hidden with in one-click. The decorators are: Docking, Transitions, Effects, Area names, Constrains, Landmarks and Propagation rules. In this way, you can focus in the specific aspects you are modeling at each moment.
Labels: DSL Tools, Guilder, Himalia
