19 Jul 2000 jfrisby   » (Journeyer)

Wow... Advogato is cool. :)

Raph pointed me to the TIGER/Line database, and Benjy dropped me an e-mail pointing me to Bruce Perens' site, where a Free copy can be found. Cool.

I'm on a deadline so I can't review the data just yet, but I imagine it has everything I'm looking for. I can't wait to OS this job database...

I should be up-front in pointing out that the system is back-end only... All the extant front-end code sucks and uses unusual tools (the best front-end code -- from the now defunct BrainPower -- uses ePerl... MrJoy.com uses HTML::Mason but the front-end is extremely crude and tightly integrated with the rest of MrJoy.com). Basically it's a high-level Perl API and database schema for posting/modifying jobs, etc. It's carved out of a larger system so some things will seem a little incomplete...

I may include my e-mail processor that lets you handle e- mailed job submissions -- using a special format -- but it's kind of clunky. I'd much rather rewrite it to use an XML language to define the jobs first.

The e-mail handler was made to work with QMail, but I've made a POP3 wrapper which can be run as a cron job... Currently the API only supports MySQL, but I'd like to port it to Postgres as well, and add support for BDB transactions in MySQL 3.23...

The job engine really hits MySQL in it's weak spots. Performance can really grind because of uber-complex queries. Feh. MySQL really needs sub-selects.

BTW, anyone looking for actual open source stuff I've written can check out MrJoy (click on "Software") or check out MasonHQ under the contributions section. It's all really trivial stuff, but it works. :)

Given the response to my last question, I'll pose another one: What ever happened to the plans to have proper garbage collection in Perl? I drove myself batty recently trying to eliminate an unintentionally circular data structure... *grumble*

On a personal note, my sweetie is great. :) She can be a tad emotional at times, but I have some of the same issues she does so I understand how she feels when her mood takes a nosedive...

I need to buy her some flowers. I haven't done that yet. I should also take her for dinner at AP Stumps or some such... The nicest place I've taken her so far is Macaroni Grill.

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