Aida/Web anniversaries

Dear Smalltalkers,

It is my pleasure to announce two anniversaries of Aida/Web web
application framework:

- 10 years of continuously running Aida/Web application: Gas Billing
System (GBS) for our national gas operator, surviving big business
changes like country tax system change to VAT, deregulation of EU energy
market, split of company to gas trader and gas transport operator, and
recently currency change to Euro. It is running on VisualWorks and
Gemstone/S;

- 1 year of our new website - see graph of first page visits on our website:

        http://www.aidaweb.si
       
Currently we have near 100 first page visits per day, which maps
roughly to 100 daily visitors. After June spike (announcement of Squeak
port), past month had a record visit. You can track statistics by
yourself here:

     http://www.aidaweb.si/stat.html

And conclusion? Aida/Web is becoming more and more known around and with
active and increasing community it is a good choice for web development
needs on many fields, from business applications to regular websites.
And we didn't say a final word yet. Stay tuned!

Janko Mivšek

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

Contratulations Janko!

This is a very good new and deserve some reflections:

1. The open source really works!

2. Not need to change the systems each 2 or 3 years (as is the
interest of most of "big players")

3. A single motivated and smart guy may develop anything comparable
and better than the products of "big players"

4. "Write your own reflection here" :)

Cheers.
Germán.



2008/2/1, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]>:

Hello Germán,

Germán Arduino wrote:

> Contratulations Janko!

Thanks!

> This is a very good new and deserve some reflections:
> 1. The open source really works!

Yep. Even that Aida was open-sourced two years later, in 2000, it was
this action which helped me a lot. Now Aida is developed side by side
with my other commercial products and already by help of community as
well. So a good mixture of open-source and a commercial activity is a
way to go, I think for Squeak too.

> 2. Not need to change the systems each 2 or 3 years (as is the
> interest of most of "big players")

Agreed, but that's easy to understand, those players have a profit out
of such frequent changes.

> 3. A single motivated and smart guy may develop anything comparable
> and better than the products of "big players"

This is a very interesting observation indeed. How much more you as an
individual can actually do comparing to hordes of coders in these big
players. Well, maybe from a commercial viewpoint we are not welcome? At
the end it is somehow more profitable to have a factory of such coders
instead of few dedicated individuals. Strange I know, but looks true.

> 4. "Write your own reflection here" :)

HEre others are invited to join! :)

Best regards
JAnko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

My congratulations!


> - 10 years of continuously running Aida/Web application: Gas Billing  
> System (GBS) for our national gas operator, surviving big business  
> changes like country tax system change to VAT, deregulation of EU  
> energy market, split of company to gas trader and gas transport  
> operator, and recently currency change to Euro. It is running on  
> VisualWorks and Gemstone/S;

Interesting expirience. Very good for promotion.

Could you also tell how much objects in it and how big size it is.  
Does it has a long historic data?

I also just looked at the performance comparison with Seaside. Looks  
like AIDA performs twice faster than Seaside.

Then it's interesting how AIDA/Web and Seaside compares in development  
time efforts and simplicity, maintainabillity.

Hi,
rendering speed, but Aida is still a lot faster.

> Then it's interesting how AIDA/Web and Seaside compares in development  
> time efforts and simplicity, maintainabillity.

I worked with both frameworks. Aida/Web is a lot easier to understand,
and it works "as you expect", there is no surprise. If you need to
manage users, groups and security, Aida is also a very good choice: it's
secure by default, and has a built in complete users and groups
managment.

Both frameworks use components, it's called WebElement in Aida.

About maintainability, I think both frameworks are a good choice.

Another thing, Swazoo is a very good web server, better than Kom IMHO.
But I think Seaside can work with Swazoo too now.

Cheers!

Nicolas
>
--
Nicolas Petton
http://nico.bioskop.fr
            ___
          ooooooo
         OOOOOOOOO
        |Smalltalk|
         OOOOOOOOO
          ooooooo
           \   /
            [|]
--------------------------------
Ma clé PGP est disponible ici :
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&amp;search=0xE788C34D

Hi Janko:

2008/2/2, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]>:
Yes, sure, that is the question. Such "big players" sell that illusion
of innovation to the managers and decision makers that don't
understand nothing of the technical side. Such managers are "sitting
duck" to the big software companies (by example M$) and they don't
need much effort to sell its "licenses".

Arguments as  "All world is using these products, I can't fail using
the sames", some gifts and trips to exotic conferences make the rest.


> > 3. A single motivated and smart guy may develop anything comparable
> > and better than the products of "big players"
>
> This is a very interesting observation indeed. How much more you as an
> individual can actually do comparing to hordes of coders in these big
> players. Well, maybe from a commercial viewpoint we are not welcome? At
> the end it is somehow more profitable to have a factory of such coders
> instead of few dedicated individuals. Strange I know, but looks true.
>

I think that several factors must be considered:

* Motivation (May be present (or not) in a single guy or in an
employee of a big software factory). I tend to think that all of us
are more motivated when work in our own projects. May be a sort of
human behavior?

I read that Google permit its employees some time at week to work on
their own projects, indeed some reasons must exist.

* Having a small group of dedicated hackers need also a counterpart of
correct attitude in the boss/owner of the company. Seems very hard
that a common entrepreneur (that only want to make money) can manage
hackers. They need another style of work and thinking, even if they
also need the money. Here is were I presume the "hordes of coders"
have their space. Not all are hackers, not all are doing software
development loving the task........but not all are doing superb
software. This is the difference.

* About not welcomed......may be not, but the "big players" have the
money to buy anything they consider interesting/innovative, the
problem is that they have only a partial vision about good
software/innovation (IMHO).

Cheers.

--
Germán S. Arduino
http://www.arsol.biz
http://www.arsol.net

Hi Vladimir,

Vladimir Pogorelenko wrote:
Last time I asked them they had about 2 GB big database, while I don't
know the number of objects. There is a historical data in time series,
that is a hourly flow on pipeline measure points. But the point is not
much on quantity of data as on complexity of billing rules (tariff
system) and changes of that rules through the time. History of the rules
and corresponding billing parameters is so exact that the system is able
to recalculate any bill in the past exactly as when it was issued, even
back in 1998.

> I also just looked at the performance comparison with Seaside. Looks
> like AIDA performs twice faster than Seaside.

> Then it's interesting how AIDA/Web and Seaside compares in development
> time efforts and simplicity, maintainabillity.

Nicolas answered you better than could I because of his experience with
both frameworks.

Best regards
Janko

--
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si