The Hindu Business Line : Blend buy-leaning with build-leaning

Are you going for open source with closed eyes? This book seeks to provide `a top to bottom view' of the technology and the skills required to manage it.

GOOGLE, NASA, Amazon.com, and Yahoo! These are some of the high skill level companies that are `heavy users of open source', apart from millions of smaller users, scientists and researchers, inform Dan Woods and Gautam Guliani in Open Source for the Enterprise. The book is aimed not at `cheerleading or fear-mongering' of open source, but seeks to provide `a top to bottom view' of the technology and the skills required to manage it.

A big benefit of open source is "the process of self-improvement that an IT department undergoes in learning how to make open source work," write the authors. Easily, the idea is exciting for developers who hunger for creativity, and for the IT management that is anxious to cut costs. "But that excitement can too easily blind even sophisticated professionals to hidden costs, unacknowledged responsibilities, and governance challenges inherent in using open source," cautions the book.

Open source is what began as "free software built by thousands of volunteers who shared the results of their work without charging any fees."

Amazingly, it is now finding acceptance by entire governments. "China, Brazil, Thailand, Peru - are all adopting open source officially and are spending millions to improve the software and encourage its adoption." The views of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the country's First Citizen, are only too well known as pro-open source. However, you should bear in mind that open source comes to life through "a profoundly democratic, decentralised, and somewhat chaotic process".

Open source isn't new; we've been sharing software since computers were invented, point out the authors. "Significant portions of the early IBM operating systems, such as HASP (a print spooler), were developed in the field by users sharing and improving the software," they inform. "IBM happily accepted the informally shared software, called it `field development', and then included it in the operating systems that helped run the huge mainframes that were the company's vehicle for making money."

IBM's Eclipse project, now `open' and governed by the Eclipse Foundation (www.eclipse.org) finds mention in the book as "one of the most popular integrated development environments, excelling not only at Java but also across a diverse range of languages," say the authors.

How to measure the maturity of open source? To help, the book describes the Open Source Maturity model listing criteria such as product age, multiple supported platforms, momentum, popularity, design quality, set-up and usage costs, modularity, standards compliance and developer support.

"Any organisation setting out to use open source must set aside some time for research and experimentation. There is no way to skirt this time commitment," advise the authors. "Higher skills reduce the time investment and the cost of using open source."

What do you with the accountant who is asking questions about the ROI (return on investment) for open source? There is the ready formula for the purpose, but please note that open source costs have a different shape than in the case of commercial software. "Evaluation of open source can involve more technical resources than an IT department is accustomed to," alert the authors. Usefully, though, the exercise can result in "a deeper understanding of both the software and the requirements".

Open source transforms companies, by making IT departments "take more responsibility as architects and creators of the solutions their companies need," opine Woods and Guliani. Creating a well-oiled IT department is difficult, they concede. "If an IT department is buy-leaning, it had better have a brilliant understanding of requirements so that it does not find itself locked into inflexible solutions that do not meet the company's needs," the authors point out. The alternative, `build-leaning', demands "rock-solid education and documentation practices to protect the department from key-person risk". Most successful IT departments combine elements of these two paths, conclude the authors.

Obligatory read, even for those who are chronically closed to the `open' idea.

PHP, Linux, Apache and Oracle

IF you're saying O for Oracle and P for PHP, you are just the right audience for Application Development with Oracle & PHP on Linux for Beginners, by Ivan Bayross and Sharanam Shah. "Programmers the world over are always looking for stable, tried and trusted, programming environments that run on a standard O/s, network, and framework to craft commercial applications with," write the authors, before pitching in a case for considering PHP, Linux, Apache Web Server, and Oracle as "four critical ingredients that permit Internet based, commercial applications to run smoothly and successfully".

One of the first lessons in the book is about downloading and obtaining Oracle 10g from www.oracle.com. "All software downloads from the Oracle website are free. Each comes with a development license that allows the use of full versions of the product only while developing and prototyping applications," state the authors. The name Apache is from `A PAtCHy sErver' explains the book in a chapter that helps in setting up `the hottest Web server for the Internet' from www.apache.org.

PHP is "completely stable, has fully functional, built-in programming libraries from which scalable, object oriented commercial applications can be crafted," you'd learn. But what does the abbreviation stand for? It seems that originally PHP stood for `Personal Home Page', though today, the official meaning is the recursive acronym `PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor,' as http://en.wikipedia.org informs. PHP is "an open-source, reflective programming language used mainly for developing server-side applications and dynamic web content, and more recently, other software," explains Wikipedia.

"Much of PHP syntax is based on C," state the authors, citing as parallels the conditional statements, loop structures, Boolean operators and so on. PHP eases the worry about memory variables; "if a number is assigned to a variable, then it just works" because PHP takes care of type conversion `on the fly'.

The book on hand is heavy on the practical inputs, guiding readers with detailed commands and screen images, examples and exercises. The presence of too many tables may appear as a clutter on the pages, but that need not put you off because a whole project source code is available in a CD that accompanies the volume, as welcome bonus.

The book is a complete course, therefore, that you can reward yourself with!

Books courtesy: Shroff Publishers & Distributors P Ltd (www.shroffpublishers.com)

Tailpiece

"Is Volcker a new computer virus doing the rounds?"

"No, I heard that name in connection with oil-for-food, but don't know which!"

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page