network programming and c++

Currently i try to reorder my knowledge of c++ network programming. Traditionally in many programms programmers implements their own classes on top of standard c technologies.
As simple wrapper i currently use socketxx library - it simple and pretty stable (for unix network programming).
But i also looks for more general purpose libraries. Some time ago i had played with ACE and Asio.
ACE - is great library for network programming, but it too big and you need to read many books to start effectively use it. But it very portable, and i can write applications, that could be run on different platform without recode the platform specific parts. I think, that we'll use it for our next generation web filtering platform.
Asio is built on the top of Boost libraries, and enought simple to start use it quickly. You don't need to build libraries, as all logic implemented as c++ headers. But it can work only with fresh gcc's (>3.3 as i remember). And another thing - it changes very often, as it very young, and authors try to find better solutions. But i hope, that they stabilize the API and we'll could use it in some of projects.
May be in future, the C++ standard comittee will think about stadard network library as a part of C++ programming language

mindmanager for mac

Today i had seen the MindManager 6 on the Macintosh Powerbook. My colleague had used mindmanager on the windows, and after switching to the map, had many troubles without MM ;-)
But now MindJet release beta version of MindManager and deploy it to the Mac's users. It looks pretty stable and work fine with old documents, but has some errors and support too few output formats - rtf, pdf, images. Absence of export to HTML or MS Office is not good, as very often we need to send documents in these formats to the customers.

new projects

I hope, that we'll starting a new project in the branch of data & process integration. I'll play as a chief architect of the project. Today i spoke with customers about main directions of these works, etc.
So, now i think about what technology we'll use - SeeBeyound, Tibco, IBM WebSphere or BEA? It is hard question, as it decision will not only technological, but sometimes political. But project is very big.

:-(

News says, that in Poland died Stanislaw Lem - legendary author in branch of science fiction. This is end of era of legends of science fiction, i don't know anybody who could write books with such impression and knowledge of life. He was one of the most interesting author in my lists of Writers.
RIP for Stanislaw Lem.

e-mail archives

In russian computer magazine (CNews) was published article about using e-mail archives in companies. In different countries exists different laws, that requires use of e-mail archives to hold all corporate e-mail (or almost all). In USA this is Sarbanes-Oxley Act & SEC Rule (for all public companies), in Europa & USA this is Basel II (it applied for banks). In Russia this is directive of Central Bank of Russia, and Russian archive law.
Many companies have e-mail archiving solutions. As example, HDS have hardware-software complex to archive corporate e-mail. Veritas & EMC have software solutions.
Our company also have product for e-mail filtering & archiving (it called MailBoss). I already mentioned it in my blog. But having of big archive is very complex problem, especially if it stored in database. In some of our installations we have terabytes archives and our support have many troubles with Oracle's performance in such archives. For small companies we have solution based on open-source PostgreSQL database. But it could be used to hold not more than 1 million e-mails. But we try to expand line of supported databases and improve performance problems

emacs & gnus

Gnus development team plan to release the gnus 5.10.8 in few days. They skip 5.10.7, as this version often mentioned in different packages (XEmacs, Debian and so on).
Almost all day had read mailing lists, that i receives lat months. there are many interesting things

mozilla thunderbird annoyance

Mozilla Thunderbird annoying me as it forgets the threading settings - i read many mailing lists and it too annoying, that i see threads with readed messages.
Thinking about switching back to the GNU Emacs/Gnus. But i still too lazy to customize it to use certificates when i working outside the office

Hiring peoples

last three day i had several interviews with peoples, who are pretend to the position of tester/support engineer. But there are none of them have a good skill for this position. Support engineer must have wide knowledge of different platforms/programms/hardware to detect errors and make decisions on how to fix them.
I think, that we need to split this position and take one tester and one support engineer, as they need to have different skills.
And i continue to search for a C++ programmer with good Unix programming skills

analyzing new products

today i working as a requirement analyst - i read functional & business requirement for a new product of cell phone company, for which we implement payment processing software. It's very interesting product for a corporate users, who are heavely using cell phones.
During the read i had found very interesting ideas about new features for this product, and may be it will implemented in new product ;-)

Certification of software

Currently, i need to start process of security ceritification of our web-filtering product. Russian certification process is nightmare for me, as i'll need to write several hundreds of pages describing our software algorithms, modules, etc. in formal language, specified by russian standards :-(

large scale development

Continue to work on the big development project. deadline is closer and closer. We'll run the production system at 1st April, and now i concerned on documentation, that is need to move system to the production. MS Word, Visio and PowerDesigner -- my main instruments. Thinks about usage of MS SharePoint Server instead of CVS, that does not provide need locking of documents, and proper handling of binary files. Many peoples leave the project, as in Moscow there is problem with good personal and peoples often change companies, in exchange for a bigger salary.
In parallel, continue to manage release of new version of our mail filtering product, but does not have power to develop it myself :-(
Finish to read C++ Coding Standards : 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices - very good book. Ready to read other books from this series (C++ in depth). My bookshelf with queue of unread books, currently contain more then 15 books. When i will have time to read them? ;-) I need to have at least one month of free time, to read them (and play with programming). Where take free time -- most important question...

GMail and spam protection

Last two week i often see spam messages in my GMail mailbox. Something like i saw at start of my GMail's usage. But now i don't understand, why Google can't process spam messages. I don't change my preferences. Many spam messages in mailbox is boring for me.
I understand, that processing of spam in russian language is very hard task - few years ago i wrote the spam processing module for our mail-filtering product, with some additional tricks to process messages in Russian. And i wonder, why google does not use something like a language detection techniques to detect the language and encoding of message, and semantically analyze them.

file format detection & virus research

Working in branch of file format detection is at almost similar to the virus investigation and preparing a signatures for antiviruses.
It will be interesting to look into the format of antiviruses databases and compare with database format, that we implemented in our file-ng utility. Is antivirus database have something like a programming language, so it will posible to describe complex tasks

Return from Germany

I returned from CeBIT. I publish all photos, that i made at germany on my site.
This was too hard to return - i get accustomed to the rhythm of the Germany life. And from the first day of return, i'm absorbed in one's work - write documentation for a big project, with deadline (for docs) at the end of this week.

CeBIT's days

Days on CeBIT filled with speaking with different peoples -- future customers, partners, and concurrents ;-)
Yesterday had meeting with some of concurrents, and discuss with them technical aspects of content-filtering process. Some of them, have interesting features.
And after day is closes, we drink the beer -- all peoples, who are working on the Sun's stand, and discuss the interesting things.
On the neighbour place are geeks from the Semapedia.org project, with their Semagramms. Project looks interesting, and may be it will grow and widespreadly used. Sun support this community project, and provide place and hardware to stay on the Fair.

Cebit!

Yep! i receive the German visa, and ticket to Hamburg. I'll on Cebit from 9th to 12th March, in the Hall 1, Stand A91, place 50 - stand of Sun Microsystems. You are welcome!