If you were an IT manager for a company, you would have to decide what IT systems to use so that everything works, so you might come to think about the following things:
1) Choosing an OS for desktop PCs
Currently Windows XP is probably the most functional OS, since it can run most of the available applications needed for most kinds of business.
It works perfectly in the 32-bit version, but the 64-bit version has problems with support and drivers.
In future, applications will need more than those 2GB of RAM which 32-bit XP can handle (+2GB in PAE mode with limitations for code and data).
Vista has much better 64-bit support than XP, but it wasn't accepted by businesses due to its high hardware requirements.
Windows 7 fixes mostly the hardware upgrade needs, but it brings a new problem: many Windows programs won't run on Windows 7, as they did on XP, and that would require businesses to redesign their software. That again might turn impossible, since in many cases there is no possibility to upgrade the software (developers have left, source code is missing, etc...), and it would easily be much more expensive than upgrading hardware.
The XP mode of Windows 7 is not much tested, and requires a seperate XP license also. From experiences with VM solutions, most people will agree that VM will have problems with some programs, which ran fine on the real XP.
Windows 7 might look much better with SP2, since from experience SP2 was the key factor which made XP and Vista usable, but since Windows 8 is probably coming out before Windows 7 reaches SP2, it might be a too long wait for most people.
Ubuntu seems to be the most downloaded Linux distro (IBM builds also their 2nd attempt of Linux on that), but that number comes also from the fact that it aims at total open source software. Businesses can't work with open source software only, as some key applications are commercial. Also the fact that Ubuntu's WINE can't handle many Windows applications, makes it useless for many people.
openSUSE is sponsored by Novell and Microsoft, and uses a hybrid open source/non-open source model, which allows it to enable access to much more software than Ubuntu. Not so surprisingly, many Windows applications run on openSUSE's WINE, which won't run on Ubuntu's WINE. I think Microsoft's support has brought some benefits to that, but it might be also just the fact that openSUSE handle's hardware better than Ubuntu.
Generally speaking, WINE runs about 13000 Windows apps, that's far more than Windows 7 runs.
Interestingly, WINE runs also high end 3D applications faster than Vista and Windows 7, but only slightly slower than XP.
Conclusion:
I would say, use XP as long as it works, and then upgrade to openSUSE.
2) Choosing the coorporate database engine
Businesses need to store data, a lot of data, and have instant access to all of them.
Notes/Domino provides a easy and functional solution for most businesses. It provides coorporate mail functions, collaborational file and rich text storage systems, and also business sales systems. For businesses with more than 1000 employees the price is around 20k per server, but you don't really need many servers. Domino lacks of SQL queries, but provides LotusScript to create superrelational queries. Generally superrelational queries are slower than bare SQL queries, but they have also no limits to what fields or data can be joined, so in the end they actually have prooven to be much faster than conventional SQL joins.
Oracle focusses mostly on business sales systems, and the price is accordingly high. You'd have to pay easily over 300k per database server. And you don't get rich text clients to work with, it's mostly just a bare SQL server, with some possibility to use OracleScript to make development faster and easier. Trying to make web based apps with Oracle makes no sense, as every other database can do it better, faster and cheaper.
MySQL is an excellent industry standard web app capable database engine, similar to Notes/Domino. Like Domino, it can serve also as a native database server, but it truly comes to power with web based apps, just like Domino. It's not quite as intuitive and easy to use as the Notes/Domino combo, but it has its own benefits. One benefit is of course that it's free and open source.
Conclusion:
Use Notes/Domino as base system, and Apache/MySQL for situations where it suits better.
3) Choosing the server OS and hardware
Windows Server 2003 R2 64-bit works fine today, and supports also more than 4GB of memory, which is essential for any kind of database server hardware. However, just like XP, it's getting soon old, and faces its end of support.
Windows Server 2008 has just like Vista and Windows 7, problems with existing Windows applications. For example Remote Desktop Connection to a Windows 2008 server will result in over 5 sec delays for each mouse click. Maybe it's fixed in SP2, but it's not confirmed.
Ubuntu Server has similar problems like Ubuntu Desktop with all kinds of harddrives or their SCSI, SATA interfaces. I tried to install on a fully intact new server hardware with Ubuntu Server, and it just didn't manage to put the physical harddrives in the RAID 10 array. It usually wanted to put cross-cable drives mixed up together, but it was rather a random behaviour.
openSUSE doesn't need a seperate version for Desktop, GUIs (kubuntu, xubuntu, etc...), Servers (Intel, PowerPC), or even consoles (PlayStation 3).
It also doesn't either need any derivates which improve, like Ubuntu needs Mint. It's just the one and only OS you need.
openSUSE is known as the OS with the fastest I/O in the world. IBM tried to challenge its I/O speed once with it's IBM AIX 6.1 OS, but they didn't come up to the same speeds. Also IBM AIX 6.1 for IBM's own PowerPC servers is not as good as running openSUSE 11.2 on those machines.
Conclusion:
openSUSE 11.2 is the perfect server OS. It has the fastest I/O, incredible hardware support, most modern Linux kernel. There's really no other alternative for any hardware, may it be Intel or PowerPC (pSeries, iSeries, PlayStation 3, Apple).
Quickr 8.2.0.9 + Domino 8.5.1FP1 = Stable!
Tue, Feb 2nd 2010 1:44p Mika Heinonen Finally I got the newest Quickr version to work together with the newest Domino version.
Before the last version update, I was running Quickr 8.2.0.0 and Domino 8.5.1 and it crashed almost daily.
Domino left a 0 byte NSD file behind each time it crashed.
Now it hasn't crashed once yet.
All SNAPPS apps are also installed and working fine. [read] Keywords: domino
nsd
quickr
16
Easy
Wed, Jan 27th 2010 11:05a Mika Heinonen I invented a new programming language called Easy.
It's faster than C++ (theoretically), since it inlines everything.
I see no point programming in C++ without Easy anymore, since the same and better results can be achieved using this new language.
It saves also a lot of time and costs when programming, and it should work also with other languages than C++, if they support variadic macros.
Here's the Easy home page:
http://www.siipi.com/easy
Easy is still in version 0.0.3.0 0.0.7.0, but it will [read] Keywords:
68
Multithreading can be cores times slower or cores times faster than single threading
Tue, Dec 15th 2009 3:25p Mika Heinonen I added multithreading capability to the Siipi speedtest tool, and it showed surprising results: Looping got almost (number of cores) times faster, but allocating memory got almost (number of cores) times slower!
Here's the test with the first part using 4 cores, and 2nd part using 1 core (as before):
Speedtest 1.1 (c) 2009 Siipi
Counting 10 billion floating points using 4 cores...
thread 1 begin=25000.000000
thread 2 begin=50000.000000
Main loop begin=0.000000
thread 3 begin=75000.000000
thread [read] Keywords:
39
Layers and Outlines
Fri, Dec 11th 2009 4:45p Mika Heinonen I've recently started to use Layers for web apps, and Outlines for Notes apps. And they give a better development speed.
However, Layers have also some problems:
1) They don't scale with the web browser window like tables do
2) When replying with history to an Notes e-mail, layers get all screwed up, so you can only use tables in Notes, but for web apps Layers are still quite good
Outlines for Notes apps totally rock though:
1) You can add a nice company logo and lots of other stuff, which I can [read] Keywords: forms
notes
development
Goodbye Firefox!
Thu, Nov 26th 2009 1:08p Mika Heinonen Welcome SeaMonkey 2.0!
Why?
Here are some reasons why SeaMonkey is better than Firefox:
1) Uses only 56MB on google.com, while Firefox uses 86MB
2) Faster than Firefox 3.5.5. Firefox 2.0 was always faster, and SeaMonkey is based on that.
3) Firefox 3 introduced frequent crashing, especially when you close and reopen it quickly, but also randomly when you open it.
4) SeaMonkey has also e-mail, graphical HTML editor, and IRC built-in. Still it uses less memory than Firefox.
5) Firefox takes someti [read] Keywords: notes
ajax
firefox
google
linux
mac
profile
security
48
The death of openSUSE
Sat, Nov 14th 2009 6:25p Mika Heinonen With the last version update to 11.2, openSUSE became useless for many companies and enthusiasts.
It no longer supports PowerPC systems, which is in the long term the best solution for servers (and consoles).
Also the Intel version of openSUSE 11.2 seems to bring no benefit over the previous 11.1 release.
It looks much uglier, it has more bugs in KDE, and it is bloated and slow like hell. After starting the OS, it rattles the harddisk for several minutes, which openSUSE 11.1 didn't do. I looked [read] Keywords: ibm
linux
microsoft
vista
ubuntu
Oracle tries to kill SUN
Thu, Oct 22nd 2009 3:46p Mika Heinonen Today the EU commission gave free hands to Oracle to deal with the SUN MySQL ownership. Oracle must deliver proof to the EU that Oracle owning MySQL does not harm the free competition. The CEO of MySQL said he is fine with that Oracle owns MySQL, but that makes it difficult for Oracle to proove that Oracle owning both Oracle database and MySQL database will not harm the competition.
There has been suggestions that Oracle could make the MySQL unit of SUN an independant opensource wing, but to del [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
applications
database
microsoft
mysql
oracle
sharepoint
24
Domino Designer 8.5.1 is now Freeware!
Wed, Oct 21st 2009 3:29p Mika Heinonen https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/dominodesigner/learn.html
However, you can only make local apps with it. This might not be a restriction though, since the developers can still send their apps via e-mail or upload them to a Quickr site where the Operation Manager picks up the new app and deploys it into the development or test server.
In addition, the Freeware version enables also new people to get involved with Domino designing, also for training purposes. [read] Keywords: designer
domino
ibm
quickr
development
server
