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of VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1 course SPRING 2003
We’re letting the cat out of the box • • • • • • • • • • The loo is done! the latest news on Plus Perl • PHP • MySQL • Java • Tcl/Tk In this issue Just in case you do • new logo not dare to ask us ... SPRING CLEANING • new lounge We thought it looked like a piece of art, so what A nip, a • new loo better place than to show it off but in our loo! It has its tuck, and • new letterhead function, but not easily guess-able. And those too polite • new...lots more to ask may want to know what it is, just in case. a bit of a This must-have toilet brush and holder (right) was begged off the display from exhibitor Roman Dietsche facelift by Graham Ellis GmbH & Co. KG (www.dietsche.com) at 100% Normally people do their Spring of Linux, Mac OS X or Windows Design in London, showcasing design innovations. cleaning at about the same time XP with a 1 Mbit broadband link the flowers are just starting to to the Internet for the duration of Public Sector Enemy #1: emerge and the sunshine is the course. Wireless, 100 base T, actually warming rather than 10 base T and analogue modem putting your ps data online just merely lighting. We’ve been connections are all available Local Government and the Our “Getting your Public Sector making revisions all along; we’re Health Service have been set Data Online” course takes public just choosing to devote our We’ve never varied on stiff targets to get their information employees who are aware of Spring issue to telling you about our quest for practical on line in the next few years. As the Web and Intranets as users, it because we’ve come a long quality; this is why we’re a result, Public Sector staff are explains which technology would way since last Spring. Those constantly going through finding themselves having to learn be right for their own use, and who have not come on courses changes and upgrades. how to tell their Flash from their gives them a good understanding since November 2002 will see the It’s not that the product JavaScript, and their Rubies from of how all the various components biggest change, and we can’t wait is bad, it’s that it can their Perls. But where to start? It’s fit together. We’re unbiased about to show you! always be made better. confusing enough without having all the competing technologies With this issue comes our certain vendors try to sell you because we teach most of them, official launch of a new logo and on their own technology, never use even more of them ourselves product design. And as ever, the mentioning that another product and have a good understanding of for trainees who bring their own course quality only improves with might suit your use better. almost all of them. laptops too. All trainees’ work each instance. is emailed back to them upon We make these constant course completion, and all the A WHC COURSE EXTRA FOR PUBLIC SECTOR WEBSITES changes because we pride tutor’s examples are available on ourselves for having “Practical the Internet. Even the manuals Quality”. In this issue, you’ll note covering the subject of the course a number of technical articles are in much more detail than you covering software quality – code might expect. that does its job well and is For those who saw the front easy to support, maintain and cover and smiled, you’ve no doubt develop further. These aspects of been to our training centre. Yes, programming are often mistakenly we’re happy to report that our overlooked; up to 80 percent of customer loo is finally finished. Itʼs one thing to be putting flat data, such as your the cost of bespoke software opening hours, online, and quite another to provide And like any proud parent, we can be in the ongoing attention facilities to let the public make appointments via the wanted to show off our pictures. Internet. This one-day course takes you behind the that it requires, rather than in the But the tour isn’t stopping at the scenes, introduces the technologies available, and helps original writing! you understand which will be best for you. loo. If you haven’t been here We also pride ourselves in for a while, you might also be Getting Your Public Sector Data Online providing practical quality on our interested in the other things Wednesday, March 12, 2003 - or - Thursday, May 8, 2003 training courses too – courses we’ve been up to. See pages 4 & Melksham, Wiltshire, England that are up to date, covering the a one-day, purpose-run course targeted to your needs 5 for photos and a peek at what subjects that you want to cover, £290.00 plus VAT (£200 each for 2nd and subsequent on same invoice) we’ve got planned coming up. incorporating an excellent tutor-to- Oh, and another thing about that student ratio. cover: If you’ve scratched your Our training centre facilities head in confusion, then you just have been outfitted with you in might be in for a different sort of mind. Every student who attends PERL experience if you do happen to JAVA a public course has exclusive book on a course here. And the PHP use of a laptop running a choice TK/TK cat? She’s part of our centre. MYSQL
[email protected] 404, The Spa, Melksham, Wiltshire SN12 6QL • 01225 708 225 • www.wellho.net
2 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS String String Max. number Max. number DATABASE TIPS types types of characters of characters Data Protection buyer beware When size char 255 In the UK, the Data Protection £95.00 + VAT to register (ignoring varchar 255 act of 1998 requires that Data the fact we’ve been registered matters in tinyblob 255 Controllers register with the Data all along). The letter looks quite your field tinytext 255 Protection Registrar, for an annual convincing and a number of people fee of £35.00, and is not VAT-able. have been misled into paying it. MySQL is an example of a blob 65535 Registration involves completing If you have received one of relational database. It typically text 65535 a number of forms that describe these notices we strongly suggest provides a bewildering choice of mediumblob 16777215 where you get your data and what you look online to see what the field types you can specify in your mediumtext 16777215 you do with it. Information Commissioner has to tables, so you’ll have to consider longblob 429496295 We received a “Final Notice” say at http://www.dpr.gov.uk/ very carefully which one to use. longtext 429496295 the other day, asking for a fee of donotbemisled.html. If you have a bit of text to hold, should you use a CHAR, Global technology and trend watching a VARCHAR or a TEXT? To answer this, you’ll need to think Whenever staff from further about the characteristics of our company visit other your bit of text (or “blob”). countries, particularly If you use a CHAR (for example the USA, we browse CHAR(30)), MySQL will allocate in bookshops, such as 30 bytes in every row for your text. Borders and Barnes Any shorter data that you enter and Noble, at length. will be space filled. An excellent Computer stores such example of a piece of data for as CompUSA don’t get which CHAR is well suited is a part bypassed either. Just number or part code, especially if it what are we looking has a fixed length. for? A VARCHAR (for example Trends. What VARCHAR(30)) allocates up product fills the to 30 characters for your text, so bookshelves? How it’s more efficient in memory use, many books are on but it does apply a strict limit. Use a particular topic a VARCHAR for a line that’s to be compared to another? printed on an adhesive label for Where is the interest instance. You must not exceed the in technology next maximum number of characters heading? topics that are cross-language, bookstores such as Waldenbooks. so that you don’t run off the label. A recent excursion to such as Content Management On a previous trip to the US last TINYTEXT limits your field Washington DC revealed: Systems, E-Commerce, Data year, there was noticed a huge width to 255 characters. • A big increase in books on Mining, Network and web site increase in wireless networking and If you want more than that, relational databases in general, security, etc. broadband products when there TEXT allows up to 65,535 and on MySQL in particular • Java remains heavily featured were just a few here in the UK. The characters. For example, use • A big increase in the number on the shelves interest for these technologies in the TINYTEXT to hold someone’s of books covering PHP • There remains significant US is still there, but the UK has now surname, and use TEXT to hold • An increase in the number coverage of Perl (but no big caught up to it, indicated by what’s a complete email header. of books on more advanced web increase) available in the UK shops today. • Tcl and Ruby remain very There seems to be a growth of Techbuzz Quickdefinitions much niche topics. You might be Apple products available in the Data Mining able to find the books if you look shops. Macintosh OS X is working Gathering information hard enough, and unfortunately, hard to bite a chunk out of the about visitors to a web they are usually mis-filed sales of other operating systems. site in order to tailor the • Online sales of books (ie We weren’t taken by surprise presentation of the site Amazon) seem to have clearly by any new types of products on to them later in their visit affected some stores; Borders this trip. Is this perhaps indicating and on subsequent visits. and Barnes and Noble are still the breakneck progress of Content Management System carrying extensive stocks, but the hardware is slowing down a little? A way of entering and managing data (usually book section at CompUSA has Ah well. It gives us time to with the intent of presenting that data through a web site) shrunk, as has coverage at other catch up to it all! that provides a consistent, easy-to-use and easy-to-administer The editors of THE FUTURIST present “Five Tips for Trend Watching” interface for both the data provider and the data accessor. excerpted at http://www.wfs.org/fivetips.htm.
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 3 Introducing:
4 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS Sneak Preview We’re in the middle of more exciting projects as well and in future issues we’ll give you a our loo closer look as we progress. But for now, here are some previews: Three years on the drawing board and six months in the making.
It’s done.
Our library includes more than 300 technical books. Trainees are welcome to browse the books while they’re with us, and borrow books overnight if they wish.
Our training centre is in a – it’s been refurbished from below All our courses are run at our Georgian Spa House on the the ground up and it now includes Melksham training centre, which outskirts of Melksham, Wiltshire. a training centre like no other. is also available for tailored When we bought 404 it was in We’ve tried to think of all the private courses for groups of up a sorry state, with collapsing details, giving you maximum to eight students. ceilings, floors that you were comfort in an environment you Whether you come from likely to go straight through, one feel at home in. We haven’t near or far, on a beginner’s power point, no central heating, scrimped on technology either, or an advanced course, we’re one water tap (that came through as our 1Mbit broadband determined to make our courses Our entire technical library is the adjoining building) and no connection is hooked up to all an enjoyable experience as well recorded on a vast database, toilet at all! That’s all changed the training machines. as an educational one. using PHP and MySQL, which can be found online on our website. We’ll even From Humble and Bumble Beginnings tell you how we did it on the relating course. For most of you, what you saw of this customer loo was a closed door. Those caught by curiosity will probably remember a cleared and just-plain-plaster, unpainted, clean room. The picture (far left) was taken at the very beginning, the day we bought the centre. Before the centre opened (left), just after the first interim ceiling collapsed, we had to discard the second, honey-drenched and Our customer lounge is badly damaged ceiling so as available from 08:00 on course mornings with coffee, to remove several seasons of snacks and soft drinks; the beehives, both honey and paper, day’s newspaper is there for and large amounts of bee glop. the reading, and BBC News 24 or similar is on the TV in Oh yes, there were live bees the background as students swarming as well! arrive.
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 5 Want to take on line payments? Interfacing to online payment systems such as Barclay’s EPDQ isn’t as hard as you might imagine. If you have a web site from which you want to accept online payments, it will need the following facilities as a minimum: a) Server-side programming support in Perl or PHP (some other languages are acceptable alternatives; check with your EDPQ sponsor for a list of these) b) A fixed domain name and URL from which orders will be checked out (you need a single checkout page, and it must not be an IP address-based page) c) The capability to act as a client to another web server (if you have access to the LWP::UserAgent module in Perl, it provides this ability; it comes standard in PHP) d) A directory on your server that can contain a Perl or PHP script to which continues on page 8
The management facilities of your If going the whole way to an Although the majority of our bank’s online order processing system automatic payment-on-order isn’t business is in providing training, we do will allow you, the account operator practical for you, there are alternatives: undertake a small number of contracts (with appropriate passwords), to enter • Online selection of goods, payment using the most up-to-date technologies orders directly without using your own details by phone or fax to keep our finger on the pulse. site at all. If you accept postal, fax and • Online selection of goods, then you We also learn these technologies so telephone orders as well as orders via email your customer requesting their that we can in turn train you (or write the net, you can enter all payments payment via the bank’s system about it in our newsletter). Contract directly and get rid of that old card- • Online selection of goods and entry work we have undertaken recently swiping machine. If you require of payment details via your own includes a web site that interfaces “cardholder present” facilities (e.g. if secure site (be careful here, there to Barclay’s EPDQ system to accept you have a shop), though, you might are many security issues) automated online payments. find that your customers prefer the You should strongly discourage your swiping machine at present. customers from sending you their we payment details in unencoded emails, direct and you should not provide a form that did it invites them to send their details via an entry open (http rather than https) form. too 6 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS Setting up online e-commerce is not as daunting as you might think.
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 7 Setting up an EPDQ continued from previous page
access is controlled using basic THE SPA B&B CONIGRE FARM THE OLD MANOR authentication. If you can set up your own .htaccess files, then you Local accommodation around Melksham probably have this facility. People attend courses at our not be informed of any changes, so There are also self catering, caravan Contacting Melksham training centre from far please verify this information with the and camping facilities nearby, as well the System and wide, and there’s a good range of establishment when you book your as other hotels, guest houses and You write your code to contact well priced accommodation available own accommodation. Pricing shown is B&Bs. Melksham Tourist Information nearby. Whilst we try to ensure the for single occupancy; many offer family Centre (01225 707 424) can provide the bank’s system with an order accuracy of these details, we might and double occupancy facilities. you with up-to-date details. number and an amount of money, and your user goes off distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes 1 The Spa B&B P: 01225 707 984 in on credit to them to make the payment. training town room premises cards 402, The Spa, Melksham SN12 6QL Once they have completed their H. Pavey 0.1 0.7 no no no Large comfortable listed Georgian home. Quiet position with open payment data entry, the bank’s £20.00-25.00 single, one room en-suite, includes breakfast views. Ample parking. server contacts your server with a distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes response (accepted or declined), 5 The Old Manor P&F: 01225 793 803 in on credit 48 Spa Road, Melksham SN12 7NY training town room premises cards which you’ll save via a second L. Bailey E: [email protected] 0.5 0.3 no no no piece of code you provide. A third Set in 3/4 acre, delightful gardens; large English breakfasts a specialty; £25.00-35.00 single, one room en-suite, includes breakfast lovely decor. piece of code which you provide distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes is then contacted by your user 7 Conigre Farm P: 01225 702 229 in on credit following a link away from the Semington Road, Melksham SN12 6BZ F: 01225 707 392 training town room premises cards bank’s site and back to yours. This D. Edwards W: www.cfhotel.co.uk 0.9 0.1 yes yes yes Family-run hotel and restaurant offers finest foods, quality piece of code needs to match the £43.00-52.00 single, all rooms en-suite, SkyTV, includes breakfast accommodation and friendly environment. returning user to the authorisation distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes 14 The Kings Arms Hotel P: 01225 707 272 in on credit you should have just received, and 20 Market Place, Melksham SN12 6EX training town room premises cards you can proceed “post payment”. 0.8 0.0 no yes no Each of the steps along the way Recently completely renovated; located in the heart of town. £35.00 single, all rooms en-suite + £6.95 full/£4.95 continental bkfst has appropriate security encoding distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes and passwords applied to keep 40 Longhope Guest House P&F: 01225 706 737 in on credit it secure, but you’ll be relieved 9 Beanacre Road, Melksham SN12 8AG training town room premises cards D. Hyatt E: [email protected] 2.0 0.9 no no no to note that you don’t need to Large Victorian house set in its own grounds; warm and friendly, well support secure (https) protocol or £28.00 single, all rooms en-suite, includes breakfast decorated. authentication on your own server. distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes 48 Beechfield House P: 01225 703 700 in on credit Important Beanacre, Melksham SN12 7PU F: 01225 790 118 training town room premises cards Considerations 2.7 1.6 yes yes yes E: [email protected] Before you can accept online Comfortable country house, 21 en-suite bedrooms, four-poster beds £80.00-90.00 single, all rooms en-suite, includes breakfast available, heated outdoor swimming pool. payments, you’ll need to consider distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes wider business issues too. As a 42 The Shaw Country Hotel P: 01225 702 836 in on credit Bath Road, Shaw, Melksham SN12 8EF F: 01225 790 275 training town room premises cards starter, you’ll need to have an J. Lewis 2.8 1.7 yes yes yes account set up by the bank and A 400-year-old farm house, supremely restored. Mulberry Restaurant reach appropriate agreements £46.00 single, all rooms en-suite, includes breakfast has a growing reputation for good food. with them. Then you’ll need to distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes 54 Woolley Grange Hotel P: 01225 864 705 in on credit gain their trust that you know Woolley Green, Bradford-on-Avon F: 01225 864 059 training town room premises cards Bradford-o-A what you’re doing in writing your N. Chapman E: [email protected] 6.1 approx. 1 mile yes yes yes Jacobean manor house in open countryside with outdoor heated pool, own code, or work with one from £90.00 single, all rooms en-suite, includes breakfast croquet, tennis, badminton. of their authorised interfacers, distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes 50 Travel Inn, Cepen Park (#267) P: 01249 462 096 in on credit perhaps using standard software. W. Chippenham Way (M4, J17) F: 01249 461 387 training town room premises cards If payments are automated, you’ll Chippenham Chippenham SN14 6UZ W: www.travelinn.co.uk 8.6 approx. 1 mile no yes yes need to ensure that you can 79 rooms with Brewsters and petrol station nearby. £41.95 single, all rooms en-suite + £6.00 full/£4.00 continental bkfst filter orders before payment is distance from centres (mi) phone restaurant takes accepted to make sure that the 56 Travelodge (#813) P: 01985 219 539 in on credit order is genuine, fulfillable from Moto Services, A36 / A350 Bypass F: 01985 214 380 training town room premises cards Warminster stock (or from short term deliv- Warminster BA12 7RU W: www.travelodge.co.uk 12.1 approx. 1 mile no yes yes 31 rooms with Burger King, Little Chef and petrol station nearby. ery), and comes from a location to £49.95 single, all rooms en-suite + breakfast from £4.45 where you’re prepared to ship.
8 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS Hullavington M4 SERVICES J17 From the city or town to Well House Consultants’ door Banks step as the crow flies Castle Coomb A350 * ... (in order of distance away) 34 Barclays Bath 10 Leicester 120 Kington Langley 26 HSBC Swindon 20 Cambridge 140 17 Lloyds TSB A420 Chippenham Salisbury 20 Sheffield 160 27 NatWest Bumpers Farm Emergency Bristol 25 Manchester 165 A4 Calne 2 Hospital Corsham Southampton 45 Liverpool 165 General Cardiff 50 Dover 175 20 Post Office A350 Lacock 33 Public Library Oxford 55 Leeds 185
22 Tourist information Beanacre Reading 60 Norwich 200 LEISURE Atworth A3102 A342 Portsmouth 70 York 205 21 The Blue Pool Swansea 90 Newcastle 275 3 Christie Miller Sports Centre Melksham A365 FOOD & DRINK Birmingham 90 Glasgow 355 Bowerhill Groceries Semington A361 Devizes London 105 Edinburgh 355 44 Aldi Hilperton * These are the mileages we use to Plymouth 115 24 Iceland A350 determine our expenses for on-site courses. 51 Made in America Trowbridge 37 Sainsbury
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SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 9 web forensics analysing It’s amazing what you can log all requests for pages. Since they entered keywords in search learn about your own business ours also tells us the previous engines, such as Google. logs for from the way people use your page people visited, we can see We get thousands of hits every search types web site. Web servers routinely what they searched for when week from the search engines and shown (left) is what people were looking for during a typical week. Another interesting search is for the phrase “regular expressions”. We’ve not separated it out as it’s often a search term used with “Perl”, “PHP”, or “Java”, but if we had done so, it would have had a larger slice than MySQL. Aside from Open Source languages, what were some of the other topics people searched for (miscellaneous)? Ten people were looking for information about flights from Bristol International During one typical week, our web site logged 3,877 searches by users for various topics. Airport and six searches were for “Melksham”. providing answers to searching questions Also comprised in the The logs of our web site tell an example of how we set up q: wiltshire spiders miscellaneous area were other us what keywords people have a machine to dual boot in our a: Several possibilities; of them: computer-related topics, such entered when they come to visit solutions centre at: as the 92 searches for Linux, 62 us via a search engine. Let’s www.wellho.net/solutions for Windows, seven for Mac OS see if we can provide answers to following the link X, five for Unix and two each for what appears to be questions they “Can Windows XP and Linux co- Solaris and AIX. might be asking ... exist on the same system?” If you haven’t analysed your q: mysql delete table q: tutor examples own web site traffic, you’re missing a: A table in MySQL can be All the examples from our training The Bug & Spider FA Spider an excellent marketing tool. deleted using the command: courses can be viewed from our DROP TABLE website via: running a robot application Before you run our code (or [tablename] www.wellho.net/resources write your own spider), beware! It’s but you’re only allowed to do so if Type the name of the example that Although the intention of alerting the web site owner to very easy to use LWP::UserAgent you have drop privileges. you want into the form (you’ll find most web sites is to provide pages that are missing. Current to write code that’s unkind to the q: read file PHP the example name in the notes you information for human visitors exchange rates, news feeds and web servers, and code that isn’t a: You can read a whole file into were given on the course), and the using Internet Explorer, dynamic data can be harvested welcome. It’s also very easy to an array using the file function, or example will be displayed. Netscape, or one of a number from other web sites to include harvest information and redistribute if you want to read a file line by line q:: tk introduction of other browsers, a good in yours. If you want to monitor it contrary to copyright. Always you can use fopen followed by a a: Tk “Tool Kit” is a GUI (graphic proportion of web hits these a site so that you know when it check the robots.txt file to see if loop of fgets or fgetcsv functions. user interface) that sits on top of Tcl days are generated by changes, a robot is going to be you’re welcome at a site (our code q: perl hashes or Perl, and allows the programmer automaton on other computers much more efficient that you above stops at robots.txt if that file a: A hash in Perl is a collection of to write applications which can be running “robot” applications. visiting the site in person. has been changed), and always scalars (variables), each of which used through buttons, sliders and Search engines use robots The LWP::UserAgent module put in some sort of delay between has a unique key which is itself a other widgets from within a window to crawl a site, visiting each in Perl is great for obtaining every few pages you harvest so scalar. on a Unix, Linux, Windows or OS page and indexing the content. data from remote URLs (see that you don’t deny use of the q: add linux xp boot.ini X computer. Linkcheckers will systematically our own sample script on the server to others or consume the a: The answer needs more than q: perl test if file exists visit every page in a domain, facing page). entire bandwidth of the server. the space available here – see a: print “$file exists\n” if (-e $file);
10 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS Sample Our sample script visits a domain the site looking for changes.It’s ideal for changed, and is easily modified to keep named on the command line, and running as a regular (“crontab”) job if on running until it exhausts a site to Script follows links to the first 100 pages within you need to be alerted when a site is check for the integrity of links.
# Check if the top of a site has changed
# Domain name to traverse $site = $ARGV[0] || “www.wellho.net”; $limit = 100; # Number of distinct pages to traverse @omit = (“cgi”);
# Locations not to watch use LWP::UserAgent; mkdir $site if (! -e $site) ;
# Check for the “robots.txt” $agent = LWP::UserAgent->new; file $agent->agent(“Well House Consultants”); # Proceed further if there is no robots file, or if it is @alt = (“Not Available”,”Changed”,”Unchanged”,”Freshly Collected”); unchanged getpage(“http://$site/robots.txt”); # If robots.txt is altered, die “robots.txt was $alt[$altered]\n” if ($altered%2); inform the process owner
@pagequeue = (“http://$site/index.html”);
while ($file = shift @pagequeue) { # Only visit each page once # robots.txt is unchanged next if ($already{$file}); since last time, or does # Limit site traversal; not exist, so proceed into last if (++$npages > $limit); the site (script assumes sleep 5 unless ($npages%10); # Don’t swamp the server! that process owner has manually checked robots $already{$file} = $stat = getpage($file); exclusion standard) if ($altered == 1 or $altered == 3) { print “$file: $stat, page was $alt[$altered]\n”; $alert++; } foreach (@links) { $fully = URI ->new_abs($_,$file) ->canonical; obtaining $fully =~ s/#.*//; data from $hopper = 1; remote urls foreach $leave (@omit) { $hopper = 0 if ($fully =~ /$leave/) } if ($fully =~ m!^http://$site/!i and $hopper) { push @pagequeue,$fully; } } } $alert and print “alter count is $alert\n”; Before you run our code (or write your own spider), beware! It’s sub getpage { very easy to use LWP::UserAgent $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => ($pagewant=$_[0])); to write code that’s unkind to the $res = $agent->request($req); web servers, and code that isn’t $altered = 0; @links = (); welcome. It’s also very easy to if (($status = $res->code()) == 200) { harvest information and redistribute ($mirrorname = $pagewant) =~ tr!/:!%=!; it contrary to copyright. Always $page = $res -> content(); check the robots.txt file to see if $altered = 3; you’re welcome at a site (our code if (-e “$site/$mirrorname”) { above stops at robots.txt if that file open (FH,”$site/$mirrorname”); has been changed), and always read (FH, $oldpage, -s “$site/$mirrorname”); put in some sort of delay between $altered = ($page eq $oldpage) + 1; } every few pages you harvest so open (FH,”>$site/$mirrorname”); that you don’t deny use of the server to others or consume the print FH $page; entire bandwidth of the server. @links = ($page =~ m/href\s*=\s*”?([^”>\s]+)/ig); } return ($status); }
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 11 1 2 3
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“My mother has a wall of friends and family photos she calls ‘The Brag Board’. I like to think our students are more than just clients; they’re our friends. And
we like to brag about them, too.” – Lisa Ellis [ADMINISTRATOR] Faces and places 12A peek around the training centre at Well House Consultants 1. Adam Sansom from practical. MySQL coding. GlaxoSmithKline concentrates on coding. 5. If you arrive by train at Melksham 9. Dan Butler concentrates on a MySQL 2. Christopher Sheraton from Ford station, let us know and we’ll collect you exercise. considers whether to use a list or a hash in our Taxi. 10. Joanna Norrington-Davies from during a practical. 6. Caroline Ellam from Three checks Eduserv concentrates on an exercise. 3. Paul Clementson of Joy Mining the output from her program. 11. A wide array of food creates lunch Machinery during a MySQL course. 7. Dave Williams pours over our first decisions for James Walker. 4. Mark King experiments with a range issue of “Of Course”. 12. Suzanne Ruggiero catches up on of conditional statements during a Perl 8. Clifford Weatherall checks his today’s headlines.
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12 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS Open Source Software: latest versions available for download Table and comments were Subject Stable Version Other Version Web Site compiled in January, 2003
Perl 5.8.0 The numbering systems used by www.perl.com different groups for their software Tcl/Tk 8.4.1.0 www.tcl.tk releases are many, varied, and often baffling. We’ve updated our Expect 5.38.0 expect.nist.gov table format since our last issue to PHP 4.3.0 www.php.net make it easier to follow and more consistent across languages. Ruby 1.6.8 www.ruby-lang.org Where a single version is shown, it’s the current production release. MySQL 3.23.54a (production) 4.0.8 (gamma) www.mysql.com Where a group is offering a testing Java, standard 1.4.1_01 (standard) java.sun.com version for general download that’s in advance of the production Java, Enterprise 1.3.1 FCS (production) Enterprise 1.4 (beta) java.sun.com release, we list the production release and also the test release. C (Gnu) 3.2.1 gcc.gnu.org We are no longer listing future Python 2.2.2 (production) 2.3a1 (alpha) www.python.org versions that you cannot yet generally download. in the table above/right from PHP 4.2.0, 4.2.1 or 4.2.2. If you’re testing – 4.0.8 is a gamma sourceforge, or from ActiveState currently running version 4.1.2 or release only.
COMMENTS ON Perl who have a ready compiled and prior, note that upgrading to 4.3.0 Some new MySQL books (such bundled version, including a may cause your scripts to break; as the MySQL Cookbook from If you’re downloading Perl to dozen extras from expect through from release 4.2.0 variables are O’Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00145-2) are install afresh, go for 5.8.0; release [incr tcl] to TclSOAP and Snack. no longer automatically populated already covering the new release 5.005_03 is still available for timid The developer’s forum for Tcl is from form, cookie and environment and it’s anticipated we would souls. If you’re running Perl 5.005, beginning to make references to contents. You can maintain expect a production release 4.0.x 5.6.0 or 5.6.1 and don’t need the release 9, which will be the next compatability through changing in early 2003. extended character handling or major release of Tcl. It’s said that your php.ini file if you wish. threading of 5.8.0, you’ll probably there will be relatively few new 4.3.0 incorporates many internal COMMENTS ON Gcc gain little from upgrading at features; rather, the structure changes. For the regular user, The Gnu Compiler Collection present. and C API will be cleaned up to the “keynote” features include supports Fortran, Java and ADA Perl 6 remains some way in make it a language for the future. speed and command line interface compilation as well as Kernighan the future, but changes that it will No release date has been set, improvements, a bundled GD and Richie C, ANSI C, Objective incorporate have become much although the web site has an library for graphics, and a unified C and C++. clearer since our last newsletter enigmatic “2003?” on it. approach to stream handling. If you’re looking to install a - see the separate article. COMMENTS ON PHP COMMENTS ON MySQL first C compiler on your system, remember that you’ll need to COMMENTS ON Tcl/Tk Version 4.3.0 was released late The production release is still in download a pre-build binary Release 8.4.1 is now stable; last year, and it’s a good idea to the “3.23” series as the MySQL distribution rather than the source you can download it via the URL upgrade if you’re running version folks are very careful with their code release.
Looking for other Open Source software? Did you realise that more than 50,000 projects are hosted at SourceForge.net? Here are ten that are likely to be relevant to our readers: phpMyAdmin A tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the WWW. Alvaro’s Messenger Written in Tcl, this is an MSN messenger client for linux/unix/windows/mac. SquirrelMail A PHP4-based Web email client. It includes built-in pure PHP support for IMAP and SMTP. Fink Written in Perl, an attempt to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. Tiki A PHP-based CMS system based on a system where the users can edit the pages as they navigate. POPFile A Perl-based email classification system. Sort incoming mail, or simply use it to eliminate spam. PHP Nuke An “Advanced Content Management System” which we’re starting to hear a lot about. Expat XML parser James Clark’s library in C; required if you’re going to use the XML::Expat module in Perl. phpdev A bundle of PHP/Apache/MySQL/PERL/phpMyAdmin/PHP-GTK preconfigured to run on Windows. Webmin A Java and Perl web-based system administration tool for Unix servers and services.
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 13 CODING TIPS Consider the use level of code before you write it G i v e s o m e t h o u g h t t o w r i t i n g a s s o m e o n e w i t h t h e s u r n a m e a p i e c e o f c o d e . Yo u r c o d i n g “Wiltshire” specified without a “Mr” t e c h n i q u e s m i g h t b e v e r y d i f f e r e n t or a first initial in front of it) could f r o m a s i n g l e - u s e u t i l i t y t o p r o d u c e cause problems. a u n i q u e r e p o r t t o c o d e t h a t ’ s g o i n g Level 3 - Robust code that t o b e r u n o n a p u b l i c w e b s i t e i s w r i t t e n a c c o r d i n g t o t h e a c c e s s e d b y m a n y d i f f e r e n t u s e r s . s p e c i f i c a t i o n o f t h e i n p u t . M y I n o r d e r t o q u a l i f y t h e s e “Wiltshire” example would work, considerations, think of three use a n d a f i l e t h a t s o m e o n e h a s levels. called “html.html” wouldn’t cause Level 1 - Code that is required problems to a web page handling to work on a single instance of a program written to Level 3. data set. It may not be a correct It’ s always best to write your solution for all possible data sets, code at Level 3 if you practically but it works for the specific need. can; other programmers have usu- Apple get it right to the cor eFor example, you’re wanting ally designed their data formats Imagine an operating system run better on the Mac. The tradi- t o e x t r a c t 8 0 0 a d d r e s s e s f r o m for reasonably easy analysis. that’ s as robust and powerful as tional Mac strengths haven’t HTML web pages, with names, More often than not, coding to Unix, with the ease of use and gone away; with the OS comes postcodes, counties, etc. entered this level is not a big problem. excellent peripheral support one Sherlock, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes b y d i ff e r e n t p e o p l e i n d i ff e r e n t O n a f e w o c c a s i o n s , t h o u g h , normally associates with the Mac a n d m o r e , a n d y o u c a n i n s t a l l ways. This would be Level 1 code, Level 3 coding can require some or Windows world. It’ s here - it’ s Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and consider that you may have considerable investment in writing Mac’ s OS X. FileMaker, Dreamweaver and so to manually adjust a few results and isn’t necessary, even if the Mac’ s OS “Ten” is built on the on. (Applications such as Quark- ( s u c h a s a c o n f u s i o n b e t w e e n computer purists will point you in groundrock of BSD Unix, with their Xpress and FrameMaker will run the county of Isle of Skye and S its direction. You should aim to Aqua Graphic User Interface (GUI) on the Classic, but are not yet 0S [Shef field] and SO [Southampton] achieve this level if you’re using running on top of it – and they’ve X-capable.) AOL software allows postcodes, especially in cases it on a public-facing web server; d o n e a n e x c e l l e n t j o b . M a n y you to dial in worldwide with ease, where the original data was S0 o t h e r w i s e , t h e r e ’s a c h a n c e o f applications have been ported, and the Unix base turns even a lap- – “S-zero”). your users finding a security hole and those which haven’t or are top into a thumping good server at Level 2 - Code designed for use they can enter. still under way can be run through home or on the road. by its author on multiple data sets. Level 3 code would be far too Classic Mode and an OS9 folder. Hardware integration within the It may not be a correct solution for c o m p l i c a t e d , p e r h a p s i m p o s s i b l e , We ’ v e n o t i c e d a m o v e operating system is excellent too, everyone, nor according to the full i f u s e d o n t h e a b o v e a d d r e s s amongst the big names towards even with third-party products. specification of the input, but it example, or when matching a spoken M a c Tit a n i u m l a p t o p s f o r t h e i r There’ s no hassle with drivers as does work for all the data that’ s language, or if you’re doing character “travelling system”, and where you print, run a wireless, burn your thrown at it. Special cases (such or voice recognition, or translations. these trendsetters have the own CDs/DVDs, dial in from hotel c o n f i d e n c e t o s t e p , o t h e r s w i l l rooms, watch your favourite dvd, Mouse ma ts f or sale f o l l o w. I t ’s a p o w e r f u l p a c k a g e , download photos directly from Can you remember your \d’ s everything you would expect from your USB digital camera ... well, from your [[:graph:]]’ s? If Unix (Perl, Apache, PHP, Java are there’ s just no hassle. not, you might like to purchase our favourites) built in, server as OS X comes as user-friendly or a Regular Expression mousemat well as client. Those who have as geekish as you need. Any level – just £4.95 (inclusive of VAT and u s e d M i c r o s o f t O ffi c e v. X , a n d of administrator access is allowed. shipping to a UK address). E x p l o r e r o n b o t h a P C a n d a In other words, if you know how to Mac are insistent the applications do it, it can be done. http://www.wellho.net/regex/mousemat.php4 S e t t i n g u p M a c O S X t o l o o k at t h e l o c a l / e t c / h o s t s f i l e Using your first Mac on your intranet? find that access to the local /etc/hosts file is disabled by default. Looking to get name resolution working? It’ll work fine if you have To turn it on, use the “sudo” command to give you administrator NIS, NISplus or DNS set up and configured on your network. But you’ll access, then tell the lookup daemon.
niutil -create . /locations/lookupd/hosts niutil -createprop . /locations/lookupd/hosts LookupOrder CacheAgent FFAgent NIAgent DNSAgent DSAgent
14 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS The following public courses are scheduled at our Melksham, Wiltshire training centre. Dates are through October 2003; see http://www.wellho.net for further dates. If you have four or Scheduled Prices For multiple students Courses from the same company booked on the same course, more trainees, weʼll run a private 1-day courses £ 290.00 470.00 euros simply calculate the total cost using the formula: course for you at our training centre or at your office, and tailored 2-day courses £ 490.00 800.00 euros £200.00 for each student per day plus £90.00 3-day courses £ 690.00 1,130.00 euros (e.g. 2 students / 4 days = £1,690.00) to meet individual company needs. 4-day courses £ 890.00 1,460.00 euros Prices are valid for all courses offered in this schedule and on our web site PERL 5-day courses £1,090.00 1,790.00 euros http://www.wellho.net for bookings confirmed by 31st August 2003. Perl is a programming language used in data manipulation, ÷ 3-day course, runs: Tue 26 Aug 2003 Tcl/Tk and Expectk web interaction and systems Wed 19 Mar to Fri 21 Mar 2003 PHP Programming This course covers the Tk administration. Its wide range of Wed 9 Jul to Fri 11 Jul 2003 This course covers programming extension to Tcl which provides the facilities make it ideal for large and Wed 22 Oct to Fri 24 Oct 2003 in the PHP language, and also Graphic User Interface. Learn how small jobs, and it can act as an Perl Extra state, cookies, interfacing to SQL to build widgets, how to pack them excellent glueware between otherwise Perl Extra is only available to and XML handling, and emailing into frames, and how to use them unconnectable applications. individual trainees who have from the server that you’ll need to to provide interactive, GUI-based Learning to Program in Perl attended one of our public Perl write effective server side code. programs. A knowledge of Tcl is a A foundation course for those courses, and require further ÷ 3-day course, runs: prerequisite of this course. who haven’t programmed before. advanced training in a combination Tue 4 Mar to Thu 6 Mar 2003 ÷ 2-day course, runs: Covers the fundamentals of not offered by our other advanced Wed 28 May to Fri 30 May 2003 programming in Perl, and the Thu 12 Jun and Fri 13 Jun 2003 training. Wed 27 Aug to Fri 29 Aug 2003 major features of the language that Thu 16 Oct and Fri 17 Oct 2003 ÷ Dates to be mutually MYSQL are required in most applications. convenient to trainee and trainer. PUBLIC SECTOR ÷ 5-day course, runs: We study the SQL language and The National Heath Service, how it’s used from PHP, Perl and Mon 17 Feb to Fri 21 Feb 2003 JAVA 2 Local Government and other public Java 2 is a wide-ranging, Java, and administration including Mon 19 May to Fri 23 May 2003 sector bodies are working hard to portable, network-aware language user account and security controls, Mon 18 Aug to Fri 22 Aug 2003 meet government requirements to Perl Programming that you may wish to run on and database design so that you’ll have their data available online in For those with programming servers, on clients, or on stand- be putting together well thought the next few years. experience. Covers the alone hardware. out, maintainable, expandable Getting Your PS Data Online fundamentals of Perl by comparing Java Programming for the Web databases. This one-day course takes you the language with other languages, This course covers the world The MySQL Relational Database behind the scenes of web-based then proceeds on to the major of Java, and the programmer Our MySQL course covers applications and overviews the features of the language that are interfaces used on Java web- the structure of a relational various technologies for you, used in most applications of Perl. based applications. database, the SQL language, setting you in the right direction for ÷ 4-day course, runs: ÷ 5-day course, runs: database design, installation and your online provision. administration of MySQL, and its Mon 31 Mar to Thu 3 Apr 2003 Mon 28 Apr to Fri 2 May 2003 ÷ 1-day course, runs: use from open source languages. Mon 30 Jun to Thu 3 Jul 2003 PHP Wed 12 Mar 2003 ÷ 2-day course, runs: Tue 7 Oct to Fri 10 Oct 2003 PHP is a language that you Thu 8 May 2003 Mon 10 Mar and Tue 11 Mar 2003 Using Perl on the Web embed in web pages to run on REGULAR EXPRESSIONS Using Perl on a web server Mon 16 Jun and Tue 17 Jun 2003 your server. You should already Regular expressions are prob- through CGI, and other web-based Mon 8 Sep and Tue 9 Sep 2003 know something of the web, ably the most powerful pattern interfaces such as automated FTP, HTML, SQL and programming. We TCL, TCL/TK and EXPECT matching tools that is available. In clients, servers, modPerl, etc. An offer two courses: a technology The Tcl language has a wide just one or two short lines of code, advanced course that assumes day that covers enough of those range of extensions, such as Expect the knowledgeable programmer fundamental Perl knowledge. prerequisites to get you started, and Tk, making it effective for can write code that would be 10 ÷ 2-day course, runs: and a PHP programming course applications such as writing Graphic times as long using any other Mon 17 Mar and Tue 18 Mar 2003 that covers both the language and User Interfaces and automating technique. Mon 7 Jul and Tue 8 Jul 2003 its web use. repetitive operator tasks. Regular Expressions Mon 20 Oct and Tue 21 Oct 2003 Technology for PHP Tcl and Expect Basics This course refreshes any know- Perl for Larger Projects The structure of the web, web This course teaches you Tcl, ledge of Regular Expressions that This advanced course covers pages through HTML and relational from fundamentals through most you have from first principles, and topics that you’ll need to know if database access through SQL of the major features, and also the shows you how to make effective you’re using Perl for a large pro- covering the prerequisites needed Expect and [Incr-Tcl] extensions, use of them for recognising, cap- ject. Content includes variable for our PHP programming course. but not the Tk extension. turing and altering patterns. scoping, namespaces, object ÷ 1-day course, runs: ÷ 3-day course, runs: ÷ 1-day course, runs: orientation, POD, XML, SQL Mon 3 Mar 2003 Mon 9 Jun to Wed 11 Jun 2003 Thur 13 Mar 2003 database access, and more. Tue 27 May 2003 Mon 13 Oct to Wed 15 Oct 2003 Fri 9 May 2003
SPRING 2003 www.wellho.net 15 THE LATEST ON PERL 6 Still some growing pains, but expect a very mature product Do you have teenage children? If you do, in more tense moments you In London one evening a couple of months ago, Damien Conway, one may wryly think to yourself “if only I had done x when they were young”. of the group who’s been working on the core of the new Perl, spoke to Perl is a teenager too. Written initially by Larry Wall, it hit the world about 150 to 200 geeks, gathered in a Methodist Church Hall. Well House in 1988 when the Internet was a dream, before the @ character had Consultants went along in some trepidation. We’re delighted with Perl a special significance in email addresses and before Object Oriented anyway, which is why we teach it, and to some extent we take the view “if it languages used the dot to say “run this method on this object”. If only ain’t bust, don’t fix it”. The geeks were perhaps wondering the same. Larry had known how things Time and again, Damien would develop, he would Perl 6 Nugget showed how some little niggle have done things somewhat The “Intelligent comparison” operator has been swept away and differently. In Perl 6, the =~ operator becomes the intelligent match operator; there’s no replaced by a piece of sheer More recent languages longer any need to use == to compare numbers and eq to compare strings. =~ elegance that glows “wow” (such as PHP, Java and will do the lot and many more things. Depending on the operator type, it will have all over, not only clearing the Ruby) have taken account of 24 different tests it can perform. niggle but opening beautiful developments, but no doubt Perl 6 Nugget expanses of new possibilities they’ll have their teenage Vectorized operators implemented neatly, cleanly, problems in due course if they Put a ^ in front of an operator, and it’s performed on each element of a list. and consistently. survive as long. @average = (@in1 ^+ @in2) ^/ 2; Larry’s done it again, it How then can Perl be a will create a list of averages from two incoming lists. appears. language for the future? By Perl 6 Nugget When will Perl 6 be with making more brave decisions Topicalisation us? An informed source that again turn out to be Establish the current topic, then all your operators are performed on it unless suggested that it’s still some farsighted. The next release of otherwise stated. Might sound a bit like $_ (it is), but you ain’t seen nothing’ yet. way off and that we would be Perl – Perl 6 – will be a rewrite very lucky if we see anything given $value { that will not be source-code when < 10 { print “much too small”; } beyond testing code within compatible with Perl 5. Even when m:/!
Your contacts at Well House Consultants: Administration: Lisa Ellis [email protected] Technical: Graham Ellis [email protected] Phone: 01225 708 225 +44 1225 708 225 You’ll see a new look to our sites these days. (International) training notes, our manuals, our “Computer Training” reads Fax: 01225 707 126 +44 1225 707 126 (International) stationary and our web site, reflec- our new logo. Exactly. We’re Web Site: http://www.wellho.net ting the progress of Well House training specialists. The trainer Postal Address: 404, The Spa, Melksham, Wiltshire, UK SN12 6QL Consultants as a provider of high who stands in front of you takes quality, specialist training in Open classes regularly, and knows Our office hours are 08:00 to 18:00 Monday to Friday. Source languages. how to present, and get across You’ll usually reach us at weekend and in the evenings too, as we often We introduced our first Perl concepts from hashes to Object divert the phone when we’re not around. If you email us, we’ll receive your email within 24 hours, 365 days a year. course in 1996, when the main Orientation, and from database This newsletter is published by Well House Consultants Ltd. and is interest was in server-side pro- design principles to functions. He’ll distributed free. Please contact us if youʼre reading someone elseʼs gramming of Web applications by have played a major role in actually copy and would like to be added to the circulation list, or if you would innovators. That still remains an writing the course, and he’ll have like to be removed from our list. important part of our business, but ongoing personal experience of All material in this newsletter is copyright Well House Consultants, Perl has grown much more rapidly the technologies he’s teaching. Ltd., and may not be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic without prior written permission of Well House Consultants except in in other uses. Tcl/Tk and MySQL Have you ever stayed at a hotel the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. also have substantial use away where the bed is turned down and Well House Consultants has attempted throughout this publication from Internet site applications, as a chocolate placed on the pillow? to distinguish proprietary trademarks does Java. Only PHP remains “Wow”, you say. We strive to be a from descriptive terms by following the predominantly Internet-based, but “chocolate on the pillow” company capitalisation style used by the manufacturer. even it finds uses away from web and give you that wow factor.
16 www.wellho.net WELL HOUSE CONSULTANTS