In our enlightened community, PHP and MySQL are becoming the typical tag team for developing database-driven Web development. If this is your calling, pick up the new 2nd edition of Davis and Phillips' book Learning PHP and MySQL, published by O'Reilly. Intended for newcomers to the technologies, the book teaches both the PHP language and the MySQL database separately and then shows how to merge the two to generate dynamic content. It also contains content on XHTML, error handling, security, HTTP authentication and more.
If your forklift needs a Linux-driven data-capture device, AML hopes you'll use its new MT7570 vehicle mount terminal. The MT7570 is designed for “real-time receiving, put-away, picking and shipping applications in harsh industrial environments”, and it integrates securely into existing wireless networks. Full USB and RS-232 serial connections, as well as optional Bluetooth WPAN communications, provide connectivity to peripheral devices, such as bar-code scanners and printers. Construction is rugged. The MT7570 has a bright display for dimly lit environments and can withstand dust and water deluges. The device is available with either embedded Linux or Windows XPe, and both systems include terminal emulators (VT100/220, TN5250, TN3270), Web browsers and a Skype client.
Silicon Mechanics recently rolled out its new Bladeform 8100 Series of blade servers. The firm describes the line as “a family of modular computing products designed to address a wide range of high-density computing challenges by allowing multiple servers to be contained within one easy-to-manage system.” Series components include the blade server enclosure, the 8110 server blade (dual Intel Xeon), modular networking and interconnect components. Some of the key features include a modular enclosure with support for up to ten server blades, up to four redundant load-balancing power modules, 90%+ efficient power supplies, up to 2GB Ethernet switches with ten external ports each, InfiniBand expansion adapters and switch support, and remote management capabilities.
We've been informed of HPC Systems' HiPerStor, a new line of network-attached storage products. The line is targeted at three different product segments, namely SOHO/home, SMB and SMB with advanced needs. The line also features iSCSI technology, upgrade to InfiniBand, TOE NICs or 10GbE NIC, integrated volume replication and snapshot, support for disk encryption, secure Web-based management, a range of user-authentication options and more.
We bid a warm Linux-community welcome to Integrated Computer Solutions, which recently released version 3.1.1 of UIM/X, a client/server application-development tool that now also runs on Linux. UIM/X enables developers to build Motif GUIs “in a fraction of the time it takes by hand”, say the folks at Integrated. They also claim that UIM enhances programmer productivity by enabling the creation, modification, testing and code generation for the user interface portion of an application with a single tool. UIM/X supports the most current version of Motif (2.x) and runs on Solaris, HP-UX and Red Hat Linux.
At LinuxWorld San Francisco, Black Duck Software announced version 4.4 of the firm's protexIP/development, “a platform that helps companies govern how their software assets are created, managed and licensed.” ProtexIP helps developers and legal counsel in managing the use of code from open-source projects that have both decided to switch to GPLv3 explicitly and those that have decided not to switch. It also includes an enhanced KnowledgeBase, a library of open-source and vendor-added code software components that includes detailed licensing information for more than 140,000 components.
In other news from LinuxWorld, Storix, Inc., released SBAdmin v6.2, touted as the first backup and system recovery solution to integrate with IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). SBAdmin complements TSM by expanding on its features and capabilities for Linux and AIX systems. SBAdmin also writes directly to the TSM server, which cuts extraneous steps, saves time and increases reliability. In addition, the application provides TSM users with disaster-recover capabilities, including a feature called Adaptable System Recovery, which enables system restore to the same or dissimilar hardware.
Although I fear Dave Phillips will scoop me on his “Studio Dave” blog, let it be known that 64 Studio 2.0 Electric has been released. 64 Studio is “a GNU/Linux distribution tailor-made for digital content creation, including audio, video, graphics and publishing tools.” A remix of Debian, 64 Studio comes in both 64- and 32-bit flavors, allowing it to run on nearly all PC hardware. The distro combines the stability and quality of Debian Etch with a specialized real-time preemption kernel and the latest creative tools demanded by multimedia artists. The developers aim to rocket you from blank hard drive to a fully hardware-optimized and usable creative desktop in just half an hour.