Brian's Tech Blog

Using MSSQL 2005 with your rails app

Brian — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:55:35 +0000

Recently I needed to hook up a rails app to MSSQL 2005. Some quick google searches and I get tons of information that is contradictory and out of date. Once I figured out all the right steps, it is very easy to get running:

Mobile Ruby - cool stuff

Brian — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:08:58 +0000

http://rhomobile.com/

Shameless plug here - I'm working for a cool startup in Cupertino that has brought ruby to the mobile device. You write apps in ruby and html, quite similar to rails apps, and then you can deploy your app on several mobile platforms. From their website:

Rhomobile's open source mobile application framework Rhodes lets you quickly build native mobile applications for all smartphone operating systems: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android. These are true native device applications (not mobile web apps) which work with synchronized local data and take advantage of device capabilities such as GPS, PIM contacts and camera.

Another cool thing that Rhomobile provides is an online IDE. You create your apps there, and then select what device you want a build for. No need to spend time setting up mobile SDKs, it's there for you already. Currently in open beta: http://www.rhohub.com

Optimizing schema for datawarehousing

Brian — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:34:54 +0000

As I dive into the world of datawarehousing, designing the schema for this case is much different than you would for a transactional database. In a standard transactional database you would first find all your entities and relationships, and proceed to normalize to 3NF. In a datawarhousing environment you are actually de-normalizing the tables.

Datawarehousing with mysql and infobright

Brian — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:02:12 +0000

The startup I had been working for went under, so I have been busy finding a new job and settling in. Got a good gig now at a new place and things are going well.

I'm not doing as much Ruby any more, but I am doing lots of datawarehousing work. There is a new engine out for mysql called 'infobright'. It has proven to be very quick when doing the kinds of queries you do when analyzing web statistics. Easily 10x as fast as MyISAM tables.

Mechanize for page scraping facebook.

Brian — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:11:16 +0000

I am a big fan of the Mobwars game on facebook. It is pretty fun, but there is lots of tedious things that you have to do to start making money. One of these things is attacking various users attempting to boost your rating or steal money.

As a fun task, I decided to see what I could do with page scraping and Mechanize. Here is some examples on how to use it.

File upload in Rails

Brian — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:06:53 +0000

If you haven't tried uploading files in rails, you are in for a treat. Most of the time a feature is implemented that everything is done with reasonable defaults and just works. Uploading files, this is simply not the case.

Odd mysql error

Brian — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:30:30 +0000

An odd error happened with the blog software today. Not sure what has caused it yet, but I have fixed it. The error was:

ERROR 1016 (HY000): Can't open file: 'evo_hitlog.MYI' (errno: 145)

Executing a 'repair table evo_hitlog' seemed to fix the problem.

I recently had some hard drive issues with this machine, so it is possible that the database files got corrupted. Everything seems to be moving along now, if anyone has ideas on what else may have caused this, please comment.

Ruby and Windows

Brian — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:38:26 +0000

Why would I be using Windows and RoR? I am in the process of creating an automated build system for windows mobile builds, and windows mobile only builds on windows. There are quite a few things that behave different on windows vs linux or osx. The topic today is file access.