NetKernel News Volume 1 Issue 8

December 11th 2010

What's new this week?

• Some low level optimizations and fixes in layer0 and layer1.
• Substantial optimization of DPML proceses to improve caching.
• NetKernel's Apposite package/repository infrastructure explained.

System updates

layer0: Boot strap unbounded recursion with double-layered dynamic imports has been fixed. This involved changing the commission process so that it now allows short term caching of transient boot strap state, which once commissioning is complete, is expired and the full commissioned space is usable. (The headline for this was going to be "Halting Problem" solved - but that might be over egging the pudding).

layer1: Fix to the base-64 decoder when decoding very short streams. Removed the toDataURI transreptor and made it into an explicit accessor - the prevents incorrect transreptions to the DataURIRepresentation that would most obviously have occured if using DPML's <argument method="identity"> Also, for efficiency changed the data URI accessor to produce a String representation if the data URI's mimetype is text/plain, all other types provide BinaryStream as before.

lang-dpml: Chris Cormack has been pushing hard on using DPML in some very complex scenarios. This led to the discovery that the default expiry from a DPML process needed to be tweaked so that dependent expiry propagation is the default and is only not the case when it is explicitly specified with the modify-response tag. This change makes caching when using DPML behave the same as for NKF and ensures correct/optimal caching of DPML generated representations in these complex processes.

Also, improved the cacheability of DPML processes that make heavy use of the the <sequence> tag. The changes are subtle but, needless to say, sequence caching now caches whereas before it was rubbish.

nkse-control-panel: Error reporting from various tools was being lost due to a lack of CSS styling. This is now fixed.

apposite: Now supports setting up a connection to a repository with one-click upload of a repository settings description (see below for more details).

Video News

The Apposite package and repository system is pretty powerful but, apart from getting system updates, its potential has not really been fully explained.

We took the time to create a series of screencast videos showing module creation, packaging, package management, repository build and publish, hot-deploy to production, end-to-end release updates and system rollback.

The videos are embedded as video tutorials in the updated nkse-doc-content package (update, reindex docs and search "video"). Also, if you're looking for something to do this evening you can sit down with the family and watch the new NetKernel YouTube channel - which provides a common place to find all the recent video material.

http://www.youtube.com/group/NetKernel

Some say, this channel is more exciting than American Idol/X-Factor, as Annie Lennox would say, who am I to disagree.

ROC News

"Brian Sletten never RESTS" would be a good title for Brian's new series of articles over on InfoQ - his first one, "Resource Oriented Architecture: The Rest of REST", provides a great groundwork for the series.

http://www.infoq.com/articles/roa-rest-of-rest

Randy's article on NetKernel Grammars should go up on InfoQ over the next week.

On his blog, Tony has failed to deliver yet again - this time he's got a good excuse, it begins with Chris and ends with Cormack, and has been kept busy with the improvements to DPML. I already know that he does have something for you next week though.

Enjoy the weekend!