Christopher Warner "So, it's not like the code is my brain; keep it"

Plone, so where is it useful? – EXAMPLE #1

So cool, I've received a decent sum of email from people saying the same thing. "Spot on, but how do I go about using it? I need a concrete example of where it would be useful, I want to work smarter, not harder!" and then some email from people who have no idea about it asking for some clarification. So i'm going to give examples as they crop up in my own cases. The idea is that I tested some of the concepts of the talk on a control. That control being pretty much ignorant to all things content management or for that matter computer related. So here is a very relevant example:

THE WORK HARDER WAY AKA WASTE MONEY WAY!

Recently at work i've been shoveled a plate of bullshit. It involves taking data from an old content management system and moving it into an XML formatted file so that it can then be pipelined through Endeca. This data is however pretty much all over the place but essentially it exists in a database and in the XMP header space located in thumbnail images on the filesystem.

Not the biggest deal in the world extracting all of the relevant data from the thumbnails using ExifTool. Except; not all of the data existed in all of the thumbnails. Which means I had to get the remaining data from the database. Also; not the biggest deal in the world. However, the file that is supposed to be created; is supposed to be created on a regular basis for new records so that information could then be pipelined into Endeca! This means anytime new data is created in the old content management system. There needs to be a way to add that new information to a file which is then pipelined. The only caveat; there is no event system; so here is where your developer will hit the first snag with X content management system! The developer can't say "When a new piece of data is added, update file or send data to other system". So a smart developer will say, well I'll just use inotify (think of this as a piece of software that stands around monitoring changes that take place, if you add a file it sends a message saying: This file has been created!) to poll the filesystem for new thumbnails and snag the information as they are added and/or use Mysql's event scheduler to dump the specific data sets out at X time, or have it run every second or two. The not so smart developer will say lets run a cron job for this and recreate full data sets, over.. and over and over.. even when only one tiny piece of data has changed! The computer maybe able to do this quickly for small data sets but as the data sets grow and grow and grow. The time to completely regenerate full data sets will take that much longer.

So lets look at all of the problems with this from the developer view point:

1. If he or she goes the inotify route, they'll need to have RHEL5 or greater; your environment will probably have a production app supported on only RHEL4 or even more scary RHEL3. So they will have to fall back to fam, gamin, dnotify. (Limited by technology, check!)

2. If he or she goes the Mysql route you'll have to have resources to support a separate Mysql node. Primarily because you will not want to be running data retrieval routines on your production box. It's just not a good idea. (Additional resources, check!)

3. Running a cron job every second or polling every second to check for changes, DUMBBBBBBB. More wasted resources. (More wasted resources, check!)

4. "Hi, yeah well i'd like to have that information as soon as it happens!" (can't do that reliably?, check!)

5. Race conditions? (check!) Stupid use of resources? (check!) Money out of the window (check!) Additional bugs and possible data corruption? (check!) More money out of the window (check!) Eventually having a slow clunky unmaintainable system? (check!) More money hiring or spending time getting out of there?? (check!)

So far all the avenues end up in wasted resources. Wasted resources no matter how small add up over time. Time is money and so are resources.

THE WORK SMARTER WAY, ENJOY LIFE

In Plone there is an event system. So when a new piece of data is added your programmer can say "New data has been added, send data to other system". 1 step, 1 process because there is no event system in the old content management system. That data has to go through several steps and utilities before it can be used by another system and since this data isn't managed in anyway it doesn't matter where it ends up or how. It'll always be problematic. With Plone your programmer works smarter, less resources are wasted and everyone is happy. As a new piece of data is added a NewPieceofDataAdded event is kicked off and the file is updated or even better yet it's converted and directly pipelined into Endeca. So there is no polling, no extra systems or scripts. No cron jobs.. Just a simple routine; when X information is updated; send the info.

This concludes Example #1

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