My notes about computer science, programming, and software
© 2003, 2007 Jean-Marc Vanel

e-mail: Send your comments - My home page


This is my blog. Sometimes I say things in French there, and sometimes in english here.
Parfois je dis les choses en Français, et parfois ici en Anglais.

Year 2008 and after.

Table of contents

<#-- ------- 2007 - 2008 --------- -->

2007-12-29

Prolog, the key ideas of AI based software development

Found this: Solutions to some exercises in "The Art of Prolog"

On the same site there other Prolog goodies, and unexpectedly, nice pictures of Flowers in the Maritime Alps .

After some time studying Prolog alone, I come back to Ontologies, RDF and OWL, following the SWI-Prolog track. SWI has comprehensive Semantic Web facilities.

I try to sum up the key ideas that will, IMHO, shape the sowtware development in the next 20 years.

2007-11-10

Java represented as Prolog

JAVA PROGRAM REPRESENTATION AND MANIPULATION IN PROLOG

They use a clause representation for the upper structures, and lists and trees for the executable parts.

Prolog questions

Suppose I want a bi-directional correspondance between two domains. To be more specific, think of translation between Java and C++ language.

I first thought of declaring this, but I don't like the repetition of the same pattern on both sides of :- 

correspondance_java_cpp( class( X, java ), class( X, cpp ) ) :-
  class( X, java ); class( X, cpp ).

Of course in a real application the predicate class will have more arguments, or be completed by other predicates like field, method, etc.

cehteh suggests:

correspondance( class, X, [java, cpp] ) :- ...

I don't like that too much.

But I want to try another design. Let's declare,without variables, that there is a correspondance :

% declarative reading: a class in Java corresponds
% to a class in C++, and vice-versa
correspondance( class, java, class, cpp ).

Then at the class instances level:

instance_correspondance( I1, I2, Domain1, Domain2 ) :-
  instance_of( I1, C1 ),
  instance_of( I2, C2 ),
  correspondance( C1, Domain1, C2, Domain2 ).

In fact instance_of is just another property on objects, in the spirit of RDF.

property_correspondance( I1, P1, I2, P2, Domain1, Domain2 ) :-
  has_property( I1, P1, V1 ),
  has_property( I2, P2, V2 ),
  property_correspondance( C1, P1, Domain1, C2, P2, Domain2 ).

Then I'd like to say that by default there is a verbatim correspondance between instances for class and property, unless otherwise stated.

correspondance( class, java, template, cpp ).
correspondance( C, java, C, cpp ).

????? à voir ?????
property_correspondance( class, boolean, java, class, bool, cpp ).
property_correspondance( C, P, java, C, P, cpp ).

The english that is to be "translated" in Prolog rule is the following:

????????????

TODO

Is there a standard way to reuse (or translate) a BNF as a DCG ?

Trying Euler52, the OWL reasoner from Jos de Roo

I downloaded the zip from:

http://www.agfa.com/w3c/euler/ ( look for "latest version" )

First I made a smal script to launch the local (non-web) application:

% cat run_euler52.sh
java -classpath bin/Euler.jar:bin/Euler_Tests.jar:lib/tuprolog.jar euler.EulerRunner $*

Some explainations are on README and on Google pages:

http://josderoo.googlepages.com/euler52

Algebra systems

Download:

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/AxiomBinaries

Extensive documentation:

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/uploads/contents.xhtml

Try the following expressions in Axiom :

simplify 2*x + 5*x
draw ( 2*x + 5*x + x*x , x=0..30  )
solve ( 2*x + 5*x + x*x = 0 )
factor  2*x + 5*x + x*x
expand %
factor  2*x + 5*x**4
integrate ( 2*x + 5*x**4, x )
D %

2007-10-27

Interesting article about using rules for configuring Internet access from a home network:

http://www.ninebynine.org/SWAD-E/Scenario-HomeNetwork/HomeNetworkConfig-20021215.html

Random graph in Prolog

I updated ai/path_big.pl so that it compiles and executes in XSB.

The SWI version with random/2 is still here: ai/path_big_swi.pl

Now I can run and compare CPU on a simple uninformed path finding algorithm satisfying these rules:

ai/path_finding.pl

I want to check that tabled Prolog (i.e. XSB) is really quicker than SWI Prolog.

Checked swoop and Protégé; different formats for rules

Swoop is now on Google code : http://code.google.com/p/swoop/source : only 3 new source files in 2007 .

The new branch of Protégé 4.0 with the new OWL API goes on, it has more plugins :

http://protege.stanford.edu/download/release_notes/release_notes_alpha.html

The 3.X branch also goes on, with enhancements of the SWRL features. They justly leverage on the idea that a query is just a kind of rule. See:

http://protege.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SQWRL

Note that the SWRL syntax is very Prolog-like (but with the consequence at the end):

Person(?p) ^ hasAge(?p, ?age)
    ^ swrlb:greaterThan(?age, 17) -> Adult(?p)

Here is the same rule, but turned into a query returning a list of pairs :

Person(?p) ^ hasAge(?p, ?a)
    ^ swrlb:lessThan(?a, 17) -> sqwrl:select(?p, ?a)

Note that besides SWRL, Prolog and JBoss rules, there is still another syntax for rules, CWM from the W3C guys, see:

http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/doc/Rules

This is how that same rule looks in CWM:

{ ?p a Person . ?p hasAge ?age .
    ?age math:greaterThan 17
} -> ?p a Adult

CWM is used in Jos de Roo's Euler framework, were in gets translated in Prolog as an implementation low-level (!) language. He also has rules for the OWL semantic.

Reading AIMA, openmind.org

In AIMA (in historical notes of chapter Knowledge Representation) I read about openmind.org . The concept if very valuable; I could be a kind of Wikipedia for structured knowledge, if it's still active ...

It's not clear how the different projects are technically connected. It's too bad that a project aiming at sharing knowledge is so unclear in its Web pages!

Learner :

http://web.media.mit.edu/~timc/learner/

according to my Web browser the last update is august 2002.

The Animals guessing game is a good idea, but the server is down.

http://www.openmind.org/Animals.html

The Web query and input server is quite impressive, even though the knowledge is sketchy:

http://commons.media.mit.edu:3000/

try for instance the word "sepal".

There is at least one way to download the KB:

http://globalmind.media.mit.edu/forresearcher.php?lan=eng

but I'm not sure whether it's the same as the one continuously updated on the before-mentioned server.

http://kaminari.istc.kobe-u.ac.jp/PrologCafe/ feb. 2004

http://gnuprologjava.sourceforge.net/ nov. 2000

http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~bmd/PrologInJava/ 2004

2007-10-14

AI based software design, Mercury, cehteh

I published some time ago "Notes on AI based software design" on google docs.

Many thanks to cehteh on #prolog on IRCNet.

From the Mercury site:

after stripping away the declarations of a Mercury program, the syntax of the remaining part of the program is mostly compatible with Prolog syntax.

2007-10-13

Infering forms in logic programming

Using metadata on classes and properties (OWL or UML like), it is possible to infer an input form. For example, if a property has cardinality exactly one, the form will behave so as to refuse validation until a value has been entered. If the property is composite (in UML sense), an embedded form for a corresponding object should be created; in the contrary, a pull-down or other search widget will allow to enter an existing object.

2007-10-11

Random graph in Prolog

I updated ai/path_big.pl so that it compiles in XSB. but it doesn't execute yet; atom_concat/3 doesn't tolerate numbers with XSB, it needs real atoms.

The SWI version with random/2 is here: ai/path_big_swi.pl

à suivre ...

To process and concat a number into an atom, I must in XSB use character arrays. Also I discovered that there is a random/3 function in XSB, incompatible with random/1 in SWI.

I have to find how to do the equivalent of #ifdef SWI in Prolog . Maybe there exists a predicate to obtain the name of the Prolog engine. I try channel #prolog on IRCNet ... Nobody . Nothing on Prolog: The ISO Standard Documents .

consult('path_big.pl').
consult('arc_rules.pl').
start_list_of_nodes( 100, 200, _ListOfNodes, _Links ).
start_list_of_nodes( 2, 3, _ListOfNodes, _Links ).
arc( A, N1, N2 ).
arcs( node1, node2 ).

2007-10-10

I have just written a small program in Prolog which creates a random graph; I will be able to make interesting performance measurements on route finding problems .

ai/path_big.pl

I wanted to compare XSB and SWI-Prolog, but it doesn't run on XSB, because it lacks the random(+IntExpr) function. Onde could argue that a random generator has nothing to do in logic programming ...

Hopefully I can call a Java function; or I can just populate on SWI-Prolog, save the terms in a file, and read them on XSB. Or simply use a formula with multiplication by a big integer and modulo . I'll do that !

BTW the mailing lists of XSB on sourceforge are polluted by spam.

Marco indicated me the google GWT framework Web . The heavy client is back, and his key language Javascript, as the GWT examples show. After having looked at the showcase I said myself: one more example of a collection of widgets, along with Java, Qt, GTK, WxWidgets, JSP, etc. My thought process would be to abstract these concepts in an ontology, plus rules which would make it possible to apply the suitable widgets to a concrete object (or to a class).

2007-10-08

Test of opencyc.org(opencyc tricks)

I had a segmentation fault when running ./run-cyc.sh ; I had to remove 

../server/cyc/run/world/kb-5006-RH-ES3-x86_32-local.load

to force a rebuild.

To run opencyc on Fedora Core 7, I had to create a file

scripts/platform-override.txt

with the content RH-ES3-x86_32 .

Login as CycAdministrator or HPKB-User.

In Browser Tools, the most interesting page is "The Hierarchy Browser". Note that Browser Tools is not one of the top 6 icons:

Assert

Compose

Create

Doc

History

Query.

The hyperlink for Browser Tools on the top right.

The microtheories are supposed to modularize the Knowledge Base, but UniversalVocabularyMt is ubiquitous.

Looking for companies in the AI based develoment

I had a look with these keywords, that a (very wise) customer would type:

prolog ontology open source development services

2007-09-29

I added a new page about "Web browser specs : placeholder for my dissatisfactions with all Web browsers".

IA studies: Prolog, openCyc

My program of studies for the week-end, and after

2007-09-19

Some links to check about ontologies and AI

[PDF]

DIP FP6 – 507483 WP1: Ontology Reasoning and Querying D1.6 ...

Format de fichier: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Version HTML
use of the DLV reasoner yields WSML-Flight. Therefore, we do not consider DLV as. a reasoner for ontologies specified in WSML-Rule. ...
dip.semanticweb.org/documents/D1.6ReasonerTechnologyScan.pdf - Pages similaires

[PDF]

WSML Reasoner Survey

Format de fichier: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Version HTML
facing to an external DL reasoner as pointed out above). DLV. is not being developed within an open-source license, and therefore not ...
www.wsmo.org/TR/d16/d16.2/v0.2/d16.2v0.2_20051116.pdf - Pages similaires

[PDF]

Combining First-Order Logic Knowledge Bases and Logic Programming ...



Combining First-Order Logic

Knowledge Bases

and Logic Programming

using fol-programs

Master Thesis

Michael Felderer, 2006



2007-01-13

I try to understand how to use gcj on projects with a large C++ code base.
Calling C++ from Java is not documented. I got a hint from here : http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/
In fact each Java method subcontracted to C++ should be labelled native, just like with JNI. Indeed i's called CNI (C++ Native Interface)

I read AIMA, to see how I could use AI techniques for common developments tasks.

An interesting article analysing the issues when designing an API sitting between an OWL repository and an application such as an editor: Cooking the Semantic Web with the OWL API Sean Bechhofer1 , Raphael Volz2 , and Phillip Lord1

2006-07-25

Being disapointed by the ATL langage, I search in another direction :
"object graph" transformation pattern - Google search

That brings a handful of results :

GROOVE - Graphs for Object-Oriented Verification

D. Blostein, H. Fahmy, and A. Grbavec, "Practical Use of Graph Rewriting," Technical Report No. 95-373, Computing and Information Science, Queen's University, January, 1995.





2006-07-02


elipse 3.2 callisto is relased !
I've learned things in this article :
What's New in Eclipse 3.2 Java Development Tools

2006-06-27

From the developpers of the Coral UML editor , I read this interesting article :
Model Interchange Using OMG Standards
http://crest.abo.fi/publications/public/2005/TR675.pdf

Question on ATL list : get the collection of all instances of an association

IN model:
|----- *
|City|-------|
|-----       |road
    | *      |
    |---------
OUT model :
|----- *    2|----|
|Road|-------|City|
|-----       |----|
I feel that this is a nice use case , and that something is missing in ATL. Namely the possibility to get the collection of all instances of the "road" association. Because for each such instance I want to create an instance of the Road class.


==> Would this be part of the solution :

helper def : roads : Collection(Mof ! Classifier) = MOF ! Association.allInstances() ;



2006-06-24

I put a FreeMind file about UML tool development in  http://jmvanel.free.fr/uml/development-uml-tools.mm .

ATL & OCL

OCL Web Tester
Interactive OCL Tutorial
 

Build of ArgoUML from CVS : MDR class generation

The recipe :

cd src_new
./build.sh

This generates the file build/java-interfaces.jar , without which there is are lots of red files in eclipse .
The interestinig thing is that the UML 1.4 classes are generated from the XMI through MDR . This happens in a special Ant task in src/model-mdr/build.xml :

<mdr storageFile="${basedir}/${build.javas}/mymdr">
      <instantiate name="mof4models" /> 
      <readXMI file="${xmi.file}.xml" extent="mof4models" /> 
      <mapJava dir="${build.javas}" extent="mof4models" /> 
      <instantiate name="uml" extent="mof4models" package="UML"/> 
      <writeDTD file="${build.dir}/UML14.dtd" extent="uml"/>

The XMI files are in : src/model-mdr/src/org/argouml/model/mdr/mof . There is the original OMG file 01-02-15.xml , supplemented by a small 01-02-15_Diff.xml adding the MDR stuff .

So JMI and its MDR implementation allow to generate Java classes from any MOF model . For each (meta) class in the meta model ( here UML 1.4 ) , there is in the generated code (in src/model-mdr/build/java/ ) :

 The factory  OperationClass has a method createOperation() returning an instance of Operation . For an abstract class such as Classifier, there is no create method in ClassifierClass.

In turn these XXXClass classes are obtained through getters in the enclosing package.
 
I guess that the implementations corresponding to these interfaces are made through DynamicProxy's .

applicable to M1 objects ( plain classes ) ?
openMDX's JMI Tutorial

http://argouml-andromda.tigris.org/

openMDX

openMDX , the pros :

The cons : they seems to have reinvented a kind of in-memory JDO container . I couldn't understand how the real implementation ( methods body ) are injected .

JMI & EMFcomparison

I found this interesting thread while searching for "jmi emf comparison" :
[news.eclipse.tools.emf] Re: NetBeans MDR might consider adopting adopting EMOF as well
adopting EMOF as well
Java Metadata Interface(JMI) -

Misc. question about UML


uniform drag'n'drop in XML .
example of ATL transform : dual graph; cities and roads .
possible to reverse an ATL transform ?
reading of Bézivin article "unification"

2006-05-30

ATL

I installed ATL on my Linux laptop . There is no ready-made large zip like for Windows ( single zip bundle ).
I am impressed by the number (49) of ATL exemples ( http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/atl/atlTransformations/ ). Each one has at least the 5 necessary files model and metamodel A and B, and the ATL transform, plus  a detailled documentation. It covers varied domains like : UML, Java, XSLT, Relational, some Gang of 4 design patterns, Petri Net, Maven, Bugzilla, Make to Ant, SVG, etc ...
Non-eclipse ATL Web site - Eclipse/GMT/ATL website.

http://www.topcased.org/

2006-05-25

My first note since my hire by a software company ; it's my third week . My new job is about UML , not using UML for development, but writing software to manage UML models .

UML, MOF, QVT

Some URL that I found interesting about UML, MOF, etc :
UML-Based Ontology Modelling for Software Agents
MODELS2006/UML conference homepage
4TH WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES - October 13, 2003, Faculty of Electronics, Niš, Serbia
http://cs.elfak.ni.ac.yu/ciit/w4/
A MDA-based Approach to the Ontology Definition Metamodel
MDA Standards for Ontology Development
jmi repository :
mdr: netbeans.org : Metadata Repository home
QVT
QVT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Domain-specific modelling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -
The official QVT (Query, View Transform) spec. from OMG is quite readable :
http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ptc/2005-11-01
[from wikipedia] The most advanced open source implementation seems presently (May 2006) to be the INRIA ATL implementation with a large user community and a significant number of examples available from an open source library.

MTL TUTORIAL , part of http://modelware.inria.fr/
http://modfact.lip6.fr/ModFactWeb/index.jsp - Simple QVT TRL (Simple Transformation Rule Language) is presented in details in this document(in French).



2006-04-24

Electronic Books - AI and hyperlink management

Books by Alison Cawsey : introductory AI course , Computers in Teaching and Learning , and data structures and algorithms II .
http://www.markwatson.com/opencontent/ - This is an open book about AI programming in Java by Mark Watson. There is a chapter about expert system programming .

I should start a real knowledge base about articles and hyperlinks .

Paper books
"Constructing Intelligent Agents Using Java" by Joseph P.
Bigus and Jennifer Bigus, Jowh WIley, 2001, second edition. Chapter
4 is about reasoning system. There is CD with Java code attached to
the book,

"Jess in Action : Java Rule-Based Systems"
by Ernest Friedman-Hill. This is about building expert systems in
Java using Jess system, tons of code in the book.


2006-04-23

Installing WordNet 2.1

Too bad that there's no RPM on Fedora! I had to install the packages tk and tk-devel after having this message:

checking for Tcl configuration... configure: WARNING: Can't find Tcl configuration definitions

To install the packages, I used the convenient yumex GUI.

2006-03-31

The anemic business model strikes again !
I had the curiosity to look at Compiere 's JavaDoc :
MClient

2006-03-30

Reading Holger Knublauch's presentation:
Ontology Design and Software Technology
 Protege and Java, UML & Model-Driven Architecture
Ontology Design and Software Technology (June 2003)

For me UML is a good standard for drawing diagrams. It's almost the only one, and it can be applied to most things. Sadly many articles and books are full of hard-to-read Java, XML, OWL, etc snippets , instead of nice -to-look-at diagrams.
I don't agree with him about "Round-Trip Engineering" between UML and Ontology , because simply ontology has a greater expressive power, so doing  a Round-Trip :
Ontology ==> UML ==> Ontology
can lead to data loss (or complex softaware is needed to ensure data integrity). Besides that , there is the general inconvenient of round-trip engineering: at each moment in the project, the source is either UML or Ontology (the round-trip is rarely real -time) . I think the future is having robust Knowledge bases and use them as center of the architecture. Is that realistic with Protégé to-day ? I don't know ...


Design Principles by R. Martin
http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/listArticles?key=topic&topic=Design%20Principles

New on this site : Protégé links

2006-03-27

OODBMS eyeDB

I'm starting a new (Java) project, with a not too large database, that could fit in memory. The DB could be used mainly as a backup . So it's not a risk to trial new technology, especially if I use the Data Access Object design pattern.

Searching for OODBMS, I came across this :
http://www.eyedb.org/

Since 1994, EyeDB has been used in a lot of bioinformatics projects, and it went open source in 2006 . For me it's worth a trail .

Published here : http://www.howradical.com/articles/2006/02/18/ruby-rails-and-databases

So I'm trying eYeDB . The first impression is good : there is clean build procedure, with 

./configure
make

While it compiles, I have a loo at the "getting started" :
http://doc.eyedb.org/manual/html/GettingStarted/node6.html

I'm glad to see that I'm at a higher level than Java declarations , quite at an UML abstraction level :

class Person {
  string firstname;
  string lastname;
  int age;
  Address addr;
  Person * spouse inverse Person::spouse;
  set<Person *> children;
};


The instal step installs the java classes in /usr/ .
It launches doxygen, which takes again a long time .
There a dependancy towards a GNU environment. I wonder how well it would work on Windows with Cygwin .

I wonder how easy it is to switch between this ODMG database , with a Java client application, and the "classical" Hibernate solution .


make install
/usr//share/eyedb/tools/eyedb-postinstall.sh

eyedbrc start
as root .

eyedbrc status
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.

Entered on the bug tracker :
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=127988&atid=710190

eyedbrc status 
eyedbuseradd jmvanel 
eyedbsysaccess jmvanel dbcreate
eyedbodl -d jmv --update --package=person  /home/jmv/test/person.odl
eyedbodl --gencode=Java --package=person /home/jmv/test/person.odl

Question asked on the list :  eyeDB and POJO

Mozilla Calendar

The Calendar team is proud to announce the first official release of the new Lightning extension: Lightning 0.1 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This is a major milestone on the road to an integrated calendar for users of the award-winning mail-client Mozilla Thunderbird. Thanks go to all developers, testers and other supporters of the project. More information and download instructions are available on the Lightning homepage.

2006-03-20

Preparing a training on advanced Swing


The Massachusets Institute of Technology put its course on line ( OpenCourseWare ) :

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
Very good quality !



2006-03-15

Getting started with AspectJ

2006-03-12

Getting started with Checkstyle

later .......

2006-03-04

Getting started with AspectJ

2006-03-01

Package dependency and graph theory

I did this enhancement to JDepend ; it is useful for me . It reports in the textUI the names of classes causing cyclic dependency . I made the feature available to XML UI too . I also changed the Ant stylesheet :

While I was there, I also wrote a small class  counting fields and methods , extending jdepend.textui.JDepend :
src/jdepend/textui/JDependStatistics.java

Time permitting, the next step for me would be to extend the cycle finding algorithm to find all the cycle starting points. I realize that finding all the cycles ( in a badly writen  software ) would lead to an uninteresting and large amount af results. Think of a dependency graph having the shape of a large grid ! But just finding all the cycle starting points makes sense . I might need to use a library for graph theory .

2006-02-27

Adding some AOP in the eXist database

I had a look at the Spring tests, to see how I could add some AOP in the eXist database . A basic Spring example is :
AopNamespaceHandlerTests

However, it implies that the target object is retrieved from the Spring context . Is there another possibility ? I mean , how can I have an allready existing application object be "decorated" by Spring AOP ?

The goal in eXist would be to replace this code in Append . process () :

 if (!doc.getPermissions().validate(broker.getUser(), Permission.UPDATE))
  throw new PermissionDeniedException("permission to update document denied");

The relevant doc. in Srping is here :
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0-m2/reference/aspectj.html

After reading more about AOP in Spring , I realized that for my requirement, i.e. crosscutting concerns in a database engine, Spring is not the right tool. Instead, direct use of AspectJ seems the right solution .

Using AOP interceptors to create unit tests

Thinking about tests in a badly designed application , I wonder if I can generate some test source code for some class , say MyClass . Each call to constructor and method , or even field change, would be intercepted . Then the source code for the corresponding calls could be generated . The class arguments can be introspected to provide actual values in the generated code .

2006-02-15

I read this article about AspectJ and Spring 2 :
http://www.aspectprogrammer.org/blogs/adrian/2006/01/typed_advice_in.html
To make it work, I must also read :
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0-m2/reference/index.html

Article about mock objects :
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/02/11/mocks.html

Interesting blog on Spring :
http://chris-richardson.blog-city.com/

Two coverture tools to try :
http://cobertura.sourceforge.net/index.html
http://coverlipse.sourceforge.net/index.php

Vidéos sur Java en  Fançais :
http://java.developpez.tv/javadesktop-dec2005/

2006-02-13


Java Technology Performance Myths Exposed, TS-3268, JavaOne 2005
http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2005/coreplatform/TS-3268.pdf
He says that autoboxing is nearly ;-) free . But there are no figures or code, just graph with ratios .  I was searching for "performance loss autoboxing" .

2005-12-16

I read again an interesting thread on theserverside :
Is Java losing to LAMP and .NET?
My opinion: Yes Java is suffering decreasing popularity compared to Lamp. The reasons I see :


In this thread someone mentioned Wicked ; it's a Java Web framework similar to Millstone .
http://wicket.sourceforge.net/ExampleHelloWorld.html

Starting HSQLDB :
http://hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

2005-12-05

An interesting thread about VTD-XML on theserverside ... ?

The parser does not extract the XML data into a separate DOM structure but essentially uses indexes into the original document to reduce memory overhead.

2005-12-02

Article : Envisioning a New Language:
A Conversation With Sun Microsystems' Victoria Livschitz

It speaks about a ne language, called Metaphors, whose main concepts are :
entity, process, organizational principle, condition, relationship, event, and rule.


Book Data Model Patterns by David C. Hay

2005-11-27

When having the message "client denied by server configuration" on Apache, it felt good to read :
ONLamp.com: A Day in the Life of #Apache
even tough I knew the answer.

2005-11-16

After a discussion with a client, enthousiastic about C#, I check the existence of a C# Plugin for Eclipse. There is one :
Improve-Technologies: C# Plugin for Eclipse
I should also try the Mono framework , but no time now ...

Trial of WinCVS 2.0

I first install Wine :
rpm -Uvh wine-0.9.1-1fc4winehq.i686.rpm

Then the setup.exe works fine and the WinCVS' windows appears. Now I must configure WinCVS to tell it where are cvs and python. I have a loook at the Wine User Guide
 . In fact when starting wincfg I see that the Linux root is Z: under Wine. So I can configure WinCVS for the cvs executable :

/usr/local/bin/cvs

It has been installed by gCVS.

My CVSROOT is :

:pserver:jmv@localhost:/var/cvs



2005-11-11

If you want to test your knowledge on design patterns , there is this wonderful quizz :
http://home.earthlink.net/~huston2/dp/patterns_quiz.html
I could find almost all of them, but it takes 1 or 2 minutes , and sometimes the hint .  Didn't find the flyweight . I took state for stategy .

Lot more material on Patterns on the same site :
http://home.earthlink.net/~huston2/dp/patterns.html

2005-11-07

Groupware Web applications in Java
I'd like to find groupware Web opensource applications in Java, the equivalent of opengroupware, Tutos, and the like . I allready  found some :
groupware/applications.html


Searching springframework on sf.net , I found this :

2005-11-05

Check Protégé ( http://protege.stanford.edu ), the swiss knife for ontologies.
Java, open source, lots of plugins.


I got this error with eclipse debugger on Linux :

Error[0]
in gethostbyname() call!
err::Success
Socket transport failed to init.
Transport dt_socket failed to initialize, rc = -1.

The reason was that /etc/hosts was empty ; it should at least contain :

127.0.0.1      localhost

2005-10-23

Application idea : use PDM for XQuery



Application idea : open source repository of common business designs

My UML vision of 3 years ago is still good ! But it's still not realized. However there are new things to say on that matter:

First I'll propose my solution on the ArgoUML list.
Based on the eXist XMl database, it's possible to make an on-line repository of (open source) common business designs. It allows to display HTML documentation, to search items and documentation for strings.

Feature ideas for eXist


I installed the open source UML editors Umbrello :

http://rpmforge.net/user/packages/umbrello/

Too bad that Fedora Core 4 doesn't have it ! Mandriva 2005 has Umbrello .

From the same provenance I found MP3 for xmms :
http://rpmforge.net/user/packages/xmms/

2005-10-17

Quotation from the Tapestry framework at Apache.org ( http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/ ) :

In Tapestry, you create your application in terms of objects, and the methods and properties of those objects -- and specifically not in terms of URLs and query parameters.


 This week-end I switched from Mandriva to Fedora Core 4 . I had to disable SELinux to be able to boot .
What's interesting is that there is the latest gcj Java development kit with native eclipse (version 3.1M6 ):

yum install eclipse-jdt.i386

So I created a project from the eXist sources .
And guess what ?
Just 6 compilation problems !

Application idea : showing a graph from Spring Bean configuration

Since Spring Bean configuration is essentially a graph of objects, it makes sense to represent it as a graph . A nice Swing editor application (or eclipse plugin) could be developped using e.g. Jung or Touchgraph libraries.
In fact SpringViz does that by an XSLT transform from the Spring XML configuration to the Graphviz visualization format. But it's not an editor, it's just a visualization.

Conversely, the Spring XML Bean configuration could be used to reprensent any in-memory Java objects graph.
Another idea is to use this Swing objects graph editor application as a view for a debugger.
Still another idea is to use an UML editor for object diagrams. But object diagrams are little supported by open source UML editors like ArgoUML and Umbrello .


I used memtester to check my memory on Linux :
http://pyropus.ca/software/memtester/

2005-09-01

1Gb memory !

I upgraded my laptop to 1Gb . Look at this :-)

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1033644     457108     576536          0      16632     251104

And I have eclipse + eXist server + mozilla running !
It was necessary since weeks. My client's application has a separate Tomcat + Cocoon server + eXist of june 20th, and of course I need to have eXist from CVS. I'll be able to have several big projects opened in eclipse .

2005-09-26

  I developed a simple popup plugin. It is open source.
This popup plugin calls a user shell script from the popup menu, supplying as arguments the file or folder path and the project path.
It can be useful as it is, or be the starting point for other plugins. It was inspired by the excellent PDM plugin (http://pmd.sourceforge.net/) .

The small documentation is in French, but the source is commented in English. Find it all here on my site :
eclipse/ecrire-plugin-eclipse-cdt.html

(posted on  news://news.eclipse.org/eclipse.platform )


How do i get the project that is currently active programatically ?

I looked in docs everywhere : nothing .

The answer is simple: there is no notion of a current project in eclipse!
At least in the workspace object .
At each moment , there is one or more opened project(s). A project icon was last selected in the manager .
From there eclipse infers a kind of current project . That's what is done in Project / properties... pulldown menu . Sometimes it's not active, because eclipse cannot determine from the last selects a "current" project .

So what I did is add a popup extension. From the selection, I can get a projet .


I read with interest the article
Exploring Eclipse's ASTParser
How to use the parser to generate code
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ast/?ca=dgr-lnxw97ASTParser
Alas the download doesn't include the plugin.xml necessary to deploy the example application . However Manoel the author kindly sent me the last version.


2005-09-15

The XQuery Generator - The XQuery Generator is a tool written in Java that enables the user to create XQueries based on a given XML Schema by defining selections and projections using a graphical user interface. Alas , the XQuery Generator is still under development, and  only downloadable for internal purposes.

2005-09-06

I updated 2 présentations (in French) :



2005-09-03

I install the Subversion Plugin for Eclipse - Subclipse to download the Protégé source code . The UML backend is not there :-( in
http://smi-protege.stanford.edu/repos/protege/

There are 4 people on irc://irc.codehaus.org/#drools .

Protégé exercise : Drools' Pet Store

Reproduce the Drools Pet Store Example with Protégé .

I start to create an OWL ontology with classes Cart and Item . I have to look in the Protégé OWL tutorial mentioned in the Protégé OWL documentation to see what are :

The answer lies in parag. 4.4 OWL Properties .

First I don't try to reproduce the GUI. I use Algernon as a rule engine . I look in the Algernon tutorial to find the syntax , where I find inspiration in  forward-chaining rules , and Algernon commands . I begin with the following rule :

If the user has bought at least 5 Gold Fish and does not already have a Fish Tank ask the user if they would like a fish tank.


I begin with some tests in the Algernon tab to get comfortable with the Lisp-like syntax :

( (:instance Cart ?cart ) ( hasItem ?cart ?item) )
( ( :COUNT ?count ?item ( hasItem cart1 ?item) ) )

I combine both this way :

( 
  ( hasItem cart1 ?item)
  ( :COUNT ?count ?item ?item )
)

Example of class rule ( :COUNT instruction doesn't work ) :

(
(:ADD-RULE Cart ( 
  ( hasItem ?cart ?item)
         ->
   ( :COUNT ?count ?item ( ?item ) )
   (:PRINTLN "count = " ?count )
 )
)
)
;; This works :
(
(:ADD-RULE Cart ( 
  ( hasItem ?cart ?item )
         ->
   ( :COUNT ?count ?item ( hasItem ?cart ?item ) )
   (:PRINTLN "count = " ?count )
 )
)
)

Example of relation (slot) rule:

(
(:ADD-RELATION-RULE hasItem
  ( hasItem ?cart ?item)
         ->
   (:PRINTLN "count === " )
 )
)
)


Creating an instance to fire the rules :

( (:ADD-INSTANCE (?x Cart )
( :NAME  ?x "blublu")
( hasItem ?x fish1 )
) )

The rules are not saved in the Protégé files . The rules are not fired when the instance is created  through the Protégé GUI . I tried with Protégé native (CLIPS) and Protégé OWL . With Protégé native (CLIPS) I can't change the name of the instance after creation .

>>>>>>>>>> TO BE CONTINUED

Algernon in Java documentation .

2005-09-02

I'm trying Swoop with Protégé's pizza.owl example. There's a popup "Setting up views for the ontology" that takes most of my CPU for 4 minutes and more. I cancelled and restarted, clicked here and there, and managed to see something similar to Protégé. But if after that I start the Pellet reasoner, the window doesn't respond for minutes :-(( .

There are tens of people on the IRC irc://irc.freenode.net#swig - Semantic Web Interest Group hack-n-chat - UTF-8 charset please - Weblog: http://swig.xmlhack.com/ - Logs: http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/swig/ .

jmvanel

There's a popup "Setting up views for the ontology" that takes most of my CPU for 4 minutes and more :-(


jmvanel

I cancel and restarted, clicked here and there, and managed to see something similar to Protégé.


conan

jmvanel: from what I understand OWL has names and it has labels - which can be used to simulate inheritence - but protege doesn't expose this.


conan

how is swoop? someone said to try that on #swig?


jmvanel

swoop is quite similar to protégé visually, but it freezes quite too often :-(


jmvanel

I should try the new beta ...


jmvanel

OWL is XML, it has XML namespaces (xmlns) and prefixes , and each item , class , instance or property has an unique URI .


conan

yeah thats what I was reading


conan

so OWL is shoehorned a little into protege


conan

where as swoop is written for owl


conan

so hopefully it exposes things easier


jmvanel

Yes. And Protégé has the advantage to be more open to other formats (Clips, Prolog, relational DB, UML, ...) and reasoners (through the DIG interface), and visualization tools (e.g. TouchGraph, Jambalaya, ...).


jmvanel

So they are complementary. It's like HTML: I generally use Moziilla editor, but when I want spell checking, I use OpenOffice, and when I need complex substitutions I use gvim ...


jmvanel

I tried swoop-2.3alpha3 . I loads Protégé's pizza.olw example readily. I has enhancements here and there: a nice TouchGraph view .
But still it freezes (when put back in X-Window and in front again).



2005-09-01

Tried the JSave Protégé plugin . It's not a GUI plugin, just a command-line program . Maybe I would be interesting to use Java dynamic proxies, and genrate just the interfaces.

Nice discussion on irc://irc.freenode.net#protege with the author of Drools , alias Conan (Mark Proctor). I learned that for Drools 3.0, OWL integration is planned . According to Mark, Drools ands its Rete algorithm should be more efficient than Algernon . I have to check taht !

2005-08-31

Found a bug in UML backend in Protégé related to Windows file separator; send a mail to the list.

The official user documentation for UML backend seems outdated:
http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/uml/use.html

The "File" pulldown menu doesn't have UML or XMI in "export to format" item .
It is replaced by "Convert to format" .

And there's no  "import from format" item .
Instead there is a new type of project , "UML" . But I don't know how to import an existing XMI file into Protégé.

Nobody on irc://irc.freenode.net#protege :-((

Created a map of the eXist developers :
http://www.zeesource.net/maps/map.do?group=335

2005-08-30

Algernon and rules engines

Most-popular rules engines and articles, from javarules.org , The Java Business Rules Community.
Another list :
http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/rule_engines/view

Reading and running with Protégé the Algernon tutorial . It has the advantage over Drools to be integrated in Protégé, and to do both forward and backward chaining. The inconvenient compared to Drools is that we don't assert directly Java objects (but there is an indirect to do that with JSave ). I have to see how I can reproduce with Algernon some of the Drools examples . After that, I have to :

Examples of processings well suited to rules-based programming:

2005-08-29

O'Reilly: Ten Myths about Open Source Software writen in 1999 is still interesting today !

Learning Protégé / OWL

After reading the doc. on Protégé / OWL API :
http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/api/ReasonerAPIExamples.html
I download the FaCT++ reasoner . It is using the DIG interface to expose its services to Protégé :

        # start FaCT++ :
        cd /opt/apps/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.31
        export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/src/usr2/FaCT++/lib
        unset CATALINA_HOME
        bin/startup.sh
        # set reasoner URL http://localhost:8080/dig in Protégé / OWL


I follow the Madrid Protégé OWL tutorial by Matthew Horridge with the Protégé window open (and the FaCT++ reasoner Wreb server running).

2005-08-18

Test of Drools ( drools.org )

After downloading drools, do this to run the examples :

ant jar-all
ant helloword-java
ant fibonacci-java

Read the online documentation.

References

An interesting article about using business rules with Drools ("Give Your Business Logic a Framework with Drools"):
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2005/08/03/drools.html : a stock trading application

A nice thread on theserverside.com :
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=34277

For an excellent explanation of forward and backward chaining read Charles Forgy's recent articles at http://rulespower.com/ - RulesPower - Forward and Backward Chaining: Part 1 of 3 .

Drools (298 000 hits on google) and Mandarax (9 240 hits )

They each do completely separate jobs. One is forward chaining the other is backward chaining. Drools is a forward chaining system this means its reactive to data that is asserted into the system, it's event based. Mandarax is backward chaining, like prolog, you ask it questions and it tries to give you the answer.

Oryx UI for Mandarax ?

Other paths I explored :

Rules for form generation

Notes:

Here are some examples of rules for form generation :

Added 2007-10 : form fields typically depends on metadata on fields: type, cardinality, constraints; a form must be able to manipulate (partially) non-valid data; possibly temporal logic and goal-directed rules can be applied.

2005-08-09

Idea: multi-syntax editor

TODO <<<

2005-08-06

Test of opencyc.org

As indicated in README.txt , after starting run-cyc.sh , you can browse to :
http://localhost:3602/cgi-bin/cyccgi/cg?cb-start
Then you have this interesting page :
Tools
login as CycAdministrator.

2005-07-24

Exercice : import SUMO / OWL into Protégé
http://ontologyportal.org/translations/SUMO.owl.txt

http://www.co-ode.org/resources/tutorials/ProtegeOWLTutorial.pdf
Exercise 56: Import the koala ontology into an ontology
is not correct anymore: TODO <<<<

SchemaWeb provides a comprehensive directory of RDF schemas to be browsed and searched by human agents and also an extensive set of web services to be used by RDF agents and reasoning software applications that wish to obtain real-time schema information whilst processing RDF data.

[PDF] Using an Ontology to Evaluate a Large Rule Based Ontology: Theory ...

Google search :
"rule based" ontology
[PDF] Using an Ontology to Evaluate a Large Rule Based Ontology: Theory ...
http://courses.washington.edu/mebi550/HandsOn-part2.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnmaj/html/aj1rules.asp

2005-01-26

Quotation of the day
from Michael Kay : XSLT 2.0 - An Interview with Michael Kay

Being schema-aware means that a stylesheet (or query) can declare what type of input document it is designed to process, and what type of output document it is designed to produce. The main result is that you get better diagnostics when you get your code wrong.

2005-01-23

"L'art nait de la contrainte" André Gide
The art is born from constraint.

I wonder if the best programming languages are not the ones that disallow lots of things and restricts choices. Among the thing desirable to forbid:

It's not like the list of bad smells from Martin Fowler. You can't consider each as something that a programming language should avoid, because most of them are not not hard limits, like the size of classes.

2005-01-22

While thinking about my idea of navigation graph for browser, I came across this nice page of SVG examples:
http://www.croczilla.com/svg/samples/
Quite many work on Mozilla 1.7.5 .

I could do my navigation graph inside mozilla using SVG, XUL and JavaScript . There is probably a javascript hook (callback) for opening a page by clicking on a hyperlink.

Leveraging on existing Java technology, it could be a part of a 100% Java browser, or an applet (but again we need a callback on opening a page). Is there a nice open source Java browser?

Spring and JUNG

I did my first non-trivial application with Spring and JUNG ! It opens an XML file, and displays it as a graph. I used this interface for plugability of different implementations of Swing Graph Displayers :

public interface GraphDisplayer {
 public void setGraph(Graph graph);
 public JComponent getJComponent();
 public void setGraphLayout(Layout l);
}

Although quite simple, this interface says a lot about GraphDisplayer:

Here Graph and Layout are JUNG interfaces. I implemented GraphDisplayer using the GraphDraw JUNG class. The Spring configuration file (spring.xml) that allows plugability of different implementations is :

<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN"
               "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">
<beans>
  <bean id="XMLGraph" class="org.diagxml.jung.JUNGXMLGraph" singleton="false">
  </bean>
  <bean id="graphDisplayer" class="org.diagxml.jung.JUNGGraphDisplayer" singleton="false">
  </bean>
</beans>

The initialization code using the Spring Framework is :

SimpleXMLGraphApp(String url) throws Exception {
        ApplicationContext ctx = new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext(
                        "spring.xml");
        XMLGraph xmlgraph = (XMLGraph) ctx.getBean("XMLGraph");
        xmlgraph.add(new URL(url));
        graphDraw_ = (GraphDisplayer) ctx.getBean("graphDisplayer");
        graphDraw_.setGraph(xmlgraph);
}

Please note that thanks to Spring this application has no dependance to the graph technology used to represent and display the graph. I could use JGraph or Grappa ( a port of a subset of GraphViz to Java ) or touchGraph to display the graph, provided that I write another adapter implementing GraphDisplayer.

The default Layout is the SpringLayout. It lasts about 1 second for the relatively small test document. The default Layout can be changed without changing the Java code.

----------------  continued here: graph/spring-jung.html ----------------------

Download eclipse project: graph/spring-jung.zip

Programming ressources:
JUNG Manual
Spring - Java/J2EE Application Framework
Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern


MatrixPro
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/kobourov/GRIP/
GRIP: Graph dRawing with Intelligent Placement

2005-01-11

Quotation of the day
from http://www.understandingxml.com/archives/2005/01/xml_in_the_crys_3.html
... using XForms opens up the possibility that the XForm content is generated based upon a schema and requirements list, rather than drafted by a web-designer.

jmv's Comments

It's true that "using XForms opens up the possibility that the XForm content is generated based upon a schema and requirements".
It's in fact part of the movement towards a more declarative style of programming. But the interesting issue is how exactly will it be done. First, XML Schema is not the only source of data structure. UML and plain objects with properties are others. Second, how would the development process go? Transforms or wizards from XML Schema to XForms? How can we ensure the coherence between XML Schema , XForms, implementation classes?

There are also further complications. XForms alone, based on XML Schema, is unable to validate data in the most general case, because XML Schema is unable to enforce a relation between two different tags. You didn't mention also the fact that validation must in all cases stay on the server, because the web client can't be trusted.


My selection of Gurus, gourous, and experts

Seen in Recommended Reading in Cafe con Leche XML News
Search Looks at the Big Picture (Wired)
Open-sourcing the news (news.com)



2005-01-11

Development for ArgoUML

I did a development for ArgoUML. I added an entry in the pull-down menu of classes in the class diagram. This entry makes all classes connected by associations to the selected class visible.

Object Relational Mapping (ORM)

I saw this in the documentation of Apache's ObJectRelationalBridge OJB:
The mapping resides in a dynamic MetaData layer which can be manipulated at runtime through a simple Meta-Object-Protocol (MOP) to change the behaviour of the persistence kernel.
http://db.apache.org/ojb/
This dynamic aspect shows more flexibility than other products like Hibernate and iBatis.

2005-01-03

I read this article about "Language Oriented Programming" (LOP), cited by Martin Fowler here: MetaProgrammingSystem.
It's allways good to read an anbitious article like this, even if I don't quite agree.
He has right when he writes:

reinvented MOF

My view is deceptively simple: the more natural a programming environment is, the quicker it will be adopted by programers. But in the long run, the main-stream programming of to-day will appear to be a kind of handcraft of the years 1950-2010.
AI, NLP language

2004-12-30

object-viewer.html

2004-12-09

Published in news://comp.lang.java.databases
I want to federate (aggregate) several physical datasources, each having its JDBC driver.

My idea is that this aggregator could be implemented as a special JDBC driver or Connection, that will respond to queries from the application by dispatching  to the relevant tables in each physical database, and construct the final rowset by assembling rowsets from each physical database.

JDBCAggregator aggregator = new JDBCAggregator();
aggregator.addConnection(db1);
aggregator.addConnection(db2);
ResultSet = aggregator.createStatement().executeQuery (
 "SELECT * from db1.client as cl, db2.order as ord " +
 "where cl.id = ord.client_id" );


where all tables from database 1 (respectively 2) get prefix db1 (resp. db2). Or possibly no prefix if there is no ambiguity.
 
I'm looking for an open source project or code suggestions.

2004-11-14

Creole and Shrimp

I try the Creole eclipse plugin. It is a interesting concept, being based on a display of Java code (or other knoledge such as Protégé knoledge base) as a graph. But it is soooo slooooow ! I used JXPath as a test Java source, it is not very large, and my machine is a 2.4GHz Celeron. I should try the stand-alone version ...

Relational tools

I like DbModeller . I think it would be great if it would be integrated in Squirrel-SQL . Squirrel-SQL is perfectly complementary to DbModeller, having queries and database management. It has a plugin architecture, with about 10 plugins adding important features such as SQL code completion and syntaxic coloring (these plugins should be in the release). Moreover, Squirrel-SQL has a companion project that is an eclipse plugin.

Together, Squirrel-SQL and DbModeller would have about the same features as MS Access (except the GUI assistant for queries which is not very good anyway, and user forms).
Other missing features :

2004-11-04

A nice weblog page about ANTLR vs. JavaCC .

2004-10-24

eclipse web tools platform project: the replacement of lomboz :
eclipse WTP milestone plan (Draft)

2004-10-19

Marc Godin gave me this nice link about open source Java software : http://www.java-source.net/ . I proposed eXist in the category "databases".

2004-10-06

I tried to add C++ (CDT) to my newest eclipse 3.1M2 , but CDT currently doesn't work with eclipse 3.1 .

Eclipse Platform 3.x) - 

Use the following URL in a Site Bookmark in the update manager:

        http://update.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/new



2004-10-03

News

Software notes:

2004-09-27

Preparing a training about Web services, I got interested in REST (Representational State Transfer):
XML.com: Implementing REST Web Services: Best Practices and Guidelines by Hao He.

Soap and REST implementation

I came across an alternative to Axis :
ActiveSOAP - easily embeddable, StAX based framework for working with document centric Web Services,
REST services and for implementing high performance SOAP intermediaries; about Active Soap read this:

Thursday, September 23, 2004


Supporting both pure REST based XML services and SOAP based web services with ActiveSOAP



2004-09-25

The Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project will bring a synthesis of the plugins for Web development, like Lomboz and the IBM contribution.

2004-09-18

Graph software

A new version of GEF (Graph Editing Framework), the concurrent of JGraph that is the basis of ArgoUML.

A new project for graph algorithms, JGraphT , by the same team that did JGraph. No special doc. except the Javadoc .

2004-09-17

I installed the latest PMD 2.0.6 for eclipse 3.0 . PMD is now installed from an update Web site:
http://pmd.sourceforge.net/eclipse

I had to remove the empty file :

workspace/.metadata/.plugins/net.sourceforge.pmd.eclipse/ruleset.xml

which provoked an error when running PMD.


I right away applied it to GanttProject, a nice Java GUI for project management.
I found a few flaws like:


I also applied JDepend to find the cyclic dependancies among packages, as explained here :  howto-test. Result: about half of the packages are cyclic.
QUESTIONS

2004-09-12

Looking for a Database - centered CMS

For a new project I am looking for a Database - centered CMS (Content Management Systems). I call this application framework DB-CMS. Follow this hyperlink: Database - centered CMS application framework DB-CMS: specification and architecture.

Install Plone

rpm -Uvh /home/jmv/distribs/linux/Plone2-2.0.3-2.src.rpm
# compile:
rpm -bb --nodeps /usr/src/RPM/SPECS/Plone2.spec 
urpmi expat
rpm -i --nodeps /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/i586/Plone2-2.0.3-2.i586.rpm

At the end I get the message:

Creating initial 'main' instance...
Instance created. Listening on 127.0.0.1:8080, initial user: 'plone' with password: 'plone'.
For security reasons, Plone only listens on the local interface, and it is common to use Apache to proxy to that particular port to make Plone available to the outside world.
Check out the how-to section on http://plone.org  if you are unsure about how to set up proxies in Apache.
Setup of initial database in 'main' instance...
Created initial database content.
Found the database in old location. Using this for the 'main' instance...
New database location is /var/lib/plone2/main/var.
look at /etc/plone2/main/zope.conf.
Run then "/etc/init.d/plone2 start" to start Plone2.
you may create new Plone instances with mkploneinstance.

Then I browsed to http://127.0.0.1:8080/Plone to get the standard Plone wellcome page.
I can also go to the Zope Management Interface with user plone and password plone.

2004-09-01

Reading Knowledge Representation Book ... John F. Sowa, Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational
Foundations, Brooks Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, ©2000.

2004-08-31

Testing Protégé

There are two main languages plugins that are in the (3.0beta) distribution of Protégé:

Additionally, there are other languages, with their associated engines, that are less intimately linked to Protégé:

2004-08-20

I try the latest Umbrello 1.3, in a hope that the association with cardinality 1-* will be generated. I'm deceived.

I never could compile gcc from CVS, so this time I try to submit a bug report:
Back To Bug# 17118

In fact it seems that my gcc 3.3 (from Mandrake Cooker) used to bootstrap was broken...

I'm currently trying to get WordNet in a format that Protégé can understand. WordNet is available in Prolog. Maybe get a Prolog to OWL translator ? I remember that long ago someone from W3C made a translation in RDFS. I found:

Which one is best ?

While searching, I found an OWL version of opencyc.org . But I'm warned that "This file takes approximately 9 hours to load into Protege". There are 24Mbytes, 60000 entries, and among that about 50 part of plants, but also numerous properties (Color, Shape, etc).

How semantic Web can make you rich (funny):
The future's bright with RDF

2004-08-07

I went on my bike to the INRIA library and borrowed the book:
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
It is for a 1 year course for graduates. Let's see what I can learn. My primary concern is understanding ontologies and how to apply them to develop data exploration programs and enterprise repositories.

2004-08-05


I found an interesting project to define an ontology for plants:
Plant Ontology Consortium : http://www.plantontology.org

It is defined in little known language: DAG data structure, with an editor called DAG edit . I downloaded the CVS for the ontology and the software from sf.net.

"Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again." -Bruce Schneier

GNU/Linux AI & Alife HOWTO

The Generic Frame Protocol (GFP) provides a common object oriented API to knowledge representation systems
 » CLIPS, Classic, Theo, Loom, Ocelot, Sipe,
   Ontolingua, Clos, ...

2004-08-04

AI software trials

Interoperability

I created this simple ontology in KAON: km/test/plants-kaon.rdf, and I tried to load it Protégé: it said:

JenaLoader completed after 180 ms

but the properties were lost!

Protégé

In a few years, Protégé has become a fantastic toolbox with tens of plugins, much like eclipse in its domain. There is a nice little article entitled "Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology" that reuses the famous example of the wine ontology.

Following is a guided tour of the Protégé Contributions Library.

Misc

Protégé Web Browser


A Java-based Web application that allows users to share Protégé ontologies over the Internet.




OntoLing


Facilitates terminological enrichment of ontologies and includes an interface for WordNet.



Graph visualization

Among plugins, Jambalaya presents graph views, with classic layouts: horizontal or vertical trees, spring algorithm, star shaped.
To activate Jambalaya:
http://www.thechiselgroup.org/jambalaya/install
TRIED - Included in Protégé distribution.

With TGVizTab you can visualize Protégé ontologies using the TouchGraph library.

Data sources

OntoBase


Represent a relational database as an ontology and the database data as an instance tree.

This plugin has many potential uses, e.g. for enterprise repositories.

It's too bad that it's not open source.
Also is it possible to use any JDBC database?
Does it work like this: each row in a table becomes a Prolog fact (and Protégé instance), and the binding is dynamic, in the sense that if rows are added by another program, the next Prolog or Protégé query will take in account these new rows.
Finally it not clear what happens for large databases. I hope that:
- tables are not loaded in memory
- large rowsets for intermediairy queries generated by Ontobase are  loaded in memory chunk by chunk

OKBCTab


Import and export ontologies to and from OKBC servers via the OKBC interface.



Inference engines & reasoners

Included in Protégé 2.1.1 distribution.

Algernon



A rule based inference system implemented in Java and interfaced with Protégé. Performs forward and backward rule-based processing of frame-based knowledge bases.



Prolog


An integration of GNU Prolog for Java with Protégé.


CLIPSTab



Use the CLIPS Rule Engine from within Protégé.


JessTab


Allows the use of Jess and Protégé together.

Note: Jess is similar to CLIPS

Flora



A query tab based on F-Logic.


OWLViz


Navigate OWL ontologies easily and switch between the asserted and inferred model after classification. Protégé colour coding and several export formats are supported.



Shells

BeanShell


Interactively use the the Protégé Knowledge-Base API.



JOT: Jython Ontology for Protégé


A python console for editing macros for Protégé.



KAON

KAON is a nice RDF and RDFS editor, with a graph view with spring layout.

Feature

protégé

KAON GUI

Save format

protégé(CLIPS text file format),OWL,RDF,RDFS

RDF+RDFS

Documentation of classes, etc

OK

no way to add

Constraints

View documentation(Protégé Axiom Language - PAL language), documentation (GUI)

no way to add

Internal help

YES but doesn't work

NO



Ontolingua

This is attractive:
Ontolingua provides a distributed collaborative environment to browse, create,edit, modify, and useontologies. The server supports over 150 active users, some of whomhave provided us with descriptionsof their projects.
But the source for the server doesn't seem to be available. And moreover a Web User Interface doesn't seem to be best way to create ontologies.



2004-07-30

AI & KM

These days lots of readings about AI & KM.


Vocabulary equivalences

OO languages

frame-based KR

RDF

prolog

class

frame

class

concept

instance

instance

resource


field, property(JavaBean)

slot

property

predicate

static field

own slot



invariant(e.g. Eiffel)

facet, constraint







field value

filler

value


assignment


triplet

fact



2004-07-14

I'm working again on the eXist XML database, mainly doing JUnit tests and refactoring. I noticed that, due to the complexity of the product (persistent DOM, Xquery engine, XML:BD collections, user and permission management, XML-RCP, SOAP, REST remote interfaces, Cocoon adapter, ...) the numbers of bug reports grows. Meanwhile the users don't know how to report bug efficiently using JUnit, or simply provide enough information to reproduce the bug. After all, most of them are not developpers. So to help testers and developpers, I did a page explaining How to test eXist , that could be adapted for other projects as well.

Added on this site a page showing ths source code of the same GUI in different (computer) languages. This a what I call the Rosetta stone of GUI's. The idea came from a series of articles in Linux Magazine (France).

training about Design Patterns, eclipse and Refactoring

2004-05-20

It's been a long time since I haven't read Cafe au Lait Java News and Resources by Elliotte Rusty Harold . It's good to know that good things are still here !

gcj

I'm try to make a simple example showing interoperation with C++. There is a nice article on gcj by project originator Per Bothner in Linux Journal.

RPM management

This doesn't show all depandancies :

$ rpmgraph /var/cache/apt/archives/*.rpm > ~/rpmgraph.dot
$ dotty ~/rpmgraph.dot



2004-05-10

Here is the howto for doing parsing with JavaCC for C++.

2004-04-04

I put some oder in my list of software tools:
Principales_sources_technologiques.htm
I remove lots of second choices and things that I had no time to check recently here :
software2.html
While many others that I would like to have time to check are here:
Projets_a_surveiller.html

2004-01-18

I found a problem in autoconf . I got messages such as this when doing "make install" :

../../../libtool: line 1: /home/jmv/install: is a directory

Indeed such as file exists and is a link to a direstory : 

ls -l /home/jmv/install
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jmv jmv 14 jan 2 08:10   /home/jmv/install -> home0/install2


Apparently, when it's a link, configure (generated by autoconf) thinks that it's necessarily a link to an executable ...
Workaround : 

export INSTALL=/usr/bin/install ; make -e install

Reported to bug-autoconf@gnu.org

2004-01-13

Generic JavaBean editor

INTRODUCTION

For years I have been developing simulation software, and for years I have searched ways of making input forms generically. When the project is XML-centered, there are solutions based on XML Schema aware editors such as Pollo, GenDiapo, or Xerlin; also solutions based on XForms editors; all this in Java and open source.
And when the project is java-centered, a natural solution is to use JavaBean techniques. For example I tried to extract out of NetBeans the classes pertaining to this, but it was impossible to do in a short time.
The JavaBean specification was presented by Sun as something for IDE's only, useable at "design time". But many tools, such as the Castor Java-XML binding project, or the new XMLEncoder and XMLDecoder classes, make use of the specification at run time, with the java.beans.Introspector class being the main utility. Many years after the specification of JavaBeans, there is still a lack of a simple editor library leveraging on JavaBean standard. There is the Raptor project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/raptor/

but it is a heavy-weight project. For a project I reused and adapted this:
http://uk.geocities.com/johndavid_taylor/projects/beanpeeler/

I started from here and updated the bean peeler library:

Here is the current version:
http://jmvanel.free.fr/java/formation-5jours/jmvanel/beans/
There is a test main() in class BeanPeelerPane. Use the wget command to get it all.

REQUIREMENTS

Enough with the context, now about the requirements. What is done is in green.
The vision of the project is that the Generic JavaBean editor should be robust enough to accept any JavaBean object without any configuration or BeanInfo.

STATUS

It's not finished, but it runs pretty well. It does indexed properties, recursive editing. Launch BeanPeelerPane and push "Create father" ;-) button .
Next I'll do slider for numerics, and BeanPeelerPane being itself a Bean possibly edited by itself to add configuration such as behavior details, colors, fonts.
It is under GPL licence, and it will be part of an ecological/biological simulation framework that I will put on sourceforge.net today. See "Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library" on the gnu.org site.

screen copy of the generic JavaBean Editor

2004-01-06

Printer problem with RedHat Fedora and HP PSC 750

Symptom

After having booted with the printer on, kudzu proposed to configure the printer, and I let it do this. Then printtool displays:

Unable to open USB device "usb:/dev/usb/lp0": No such device

and lpq say:

imprimante is not ready

("imprimante" is the name of my printer)

However I had, following the advices on the hpoj driver website, chosen in the printtool GUI:

ptal::/mlc:usb:PSC_750

in tab "Spool type" .

Explaination and solution

/usr/sbin/printtool
a.k.a.
redhat-config-printer-gui
is misleading and doesn't refresh the diagnostic line "Unable to open ..." when you change the spool config. And above all, as the documentation says, you have to click on button "Validate" in secondary window, but that is not sufficient, then click on button "Apply" in primary window.

Before that :

cat /etc/cups/printers.conf
# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.19
# Written by cupsd on lun 05 jan 2004 15:23:27 CET
<DefaultPrinter imprimante>Info Created by redhat-config-printer 0.6.x
Location hp psc
DeviceURI usb:/dev/usb/lp0
State Stopped
StateMessage Unable to open USB device "usb:/dev/usb/lp0": No such device
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

After that :

cat /etc/cups/printers.conf
# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.19
# Written by cupsd on lun 05 jan 2004 15:23:27 CET
<DefaultPrinter imprimante>
Info Created by redhat-config-printer 0.6.x
DeviceURI ptal:/mlc:usb:PSC_750
Location hp psc
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

If I had known this, I could have changed that by hand-editing !

2004-01-02

I wanted to have a clear idea of Java performance compared to C++. So I did a simple program with 1 billion of multiplications that I tested with C++, Sun's JVM, and GNU's gcj compiler. There are other execution environments possible. At the kaffe.org site, there are many projects aiming to run Java in unusual ways. While I was here, I tried kaffe 1.1.3; installation didn't succeed on Fedora Linux, so I posted a message on their list ...

To avoid staying on a defeat, I then tried the Jikes RVM . This one looks really serious, there is a 100 pages Postscript Manual. To install it, I added this :

export HOST_JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_HOME

in

rvm/config/i686-pc-linux-gnu-jmv



2004-01-01

Axis
http://ws.apache.org/axis/java/user-guide.html

I read with much interest and alarm the announcement of the end of Speak Freely
internet telephone program. This is because of the explainations about the dangers of the Network Address Translation (NAT) in the routers connected to the broadband links.


2003-11-16

Posted in Incipient(thoughts) Laurent Bossavit's weblog, where this question was raised:
"object languages after 20 years". Have objects failed ? Is a new "post-object" era being ushered in, and can we guess what new ground will be broken in that era ?

I haven't (yet) looked at Scarlet language.

I still believe in (and practice) OO languages. What I would need for the next step and next few years is to integrate some design and refactoring patterns into the core languages. For instance you could look at each refactoring in eclipse, and ask yourself the question: what information do I add to the code when clicking while refactoring, and how could we design language extension that would make EXPLICIT this information? The most obvious design pattern to incorporate in an OO language in delegation. Something like :
delegate MyInterface to thisField;

Another line of thought is about interfaces and instanciation. Interfaces are useful, of course. BUT they leave on the hack side the essential and logically connected point: the instanciation. It's aggried and understood (not widely enough but let's leave that apart) that you should thrive to use variables declared as interface types as much as possible. In practice how you obtain a concrete object complying with a given interface can be done in a number of ways: à la JDBC, à la JAXP, à la EJB, etc.
Of course this allows lot of flexibility, but it's a terrible source of time loss and complexity. I think that languages have allways evolved out of the need to DECLARE concepts that where implicit before. This allows to check consistency of code, to build tools and IDE's, and to standardize practices.This interface and instanciation theme is closely related to so-called component or plugin framework that appear everywhere: Avalon of apache.org, eclipse plugin framework (if you know more examples write me). Both solve the interfaces and instanciation issue by having XML configuration files. The advantage of such approaches is that, once an extension point has been created, new features (classes) can be added at this point without changing one comma in the existing code. Once again, these plugin facilities should be part of a language.

Still another line of thought is the Aspect Oriented Programming, (AOP) which is based a notion of poincut, a sort of callback (hook) that can be added to any method without changing the existing code. This allows to implement generic and orthogonal concerns like security, transactions, logging, quite separately from domain-specific code. Currently in AspectJ it is implemented by "weaving" the original bytecode, which means inserting the calls to AOP methods (named "advices") into the bytecode. On the AspectJ language see Introduction to AspectJ . There is 25 hits with AOP on sf.net !

Plugin frameworks and AOP  share a same goal, adding features at some point in the code without changing the existing code.

Functional programming (ML, CAML, Scheme, Haskell, ...) is still at the margins of state-of the art programming, but it has its promisses. Namely, forbiding modification of variables after creation enables proof of programs.
More to come..........................

Mixing languages

There are currently many ways of mixing languages to take advantage of specific features of languages, or reuse legacy code:

The Functional Programming Language XSLT

TODO:
Rule-based programming
MDA


2003-11-15

Saw this interesting sentence by Michael Kay in :
Sourceforge Project: Saxon XSLT and XQuery Processor: Forums: View Forum -  Discussion Forums: Open Discussion - XQuery from XSLT

Everything you can do in a FLWR expression can be expressed equivalently using xsl:for-each and xsl:variable. (That's why I was able to implement FLWR expressions in Saxon by essentially compiling them into XSLT instructions).

2003-11-10

Building and testing Beanshell

I wrote about BeanShell, JSH, and other Java Shells here in French.

To build Beanshell from the CVS, make a directory lib, and put inside:

then just start ant:
ant jarall
Other targets are listed by:
ant -projecthelp

And now I can see that the sources from CVS are not the last sources -:((
I post a message to BeanShell developpers' list. OK, the last sources are in a zip on the site!

2003-10-12

Choice criteria for Java - XML binding

Questions about XMLBeans
I am a long-time user of Castor, but ...
questions apply equally to Castor, or ...


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