OpenWeb 01/25/2012 (a.m.)
Good article describing Node.js. The Node.js Summitt is taking place in San Francisco on Jan 24th - 25th. http://goo.gl/AhZTD I'm wondering if anyone has used Node.js to create real time Cloud ready compound documents? Replacing MSOffice OLE-ODBC-ActiveX heavy productivity documents, forms and reports with Node.js event widgets, messages and database connections? I'm thinking along the lines of a Lotus Notes alternative with a Node.js enhanced version of EverNote on the front end, and Node.js-Hadoop productivity platform on the server side? Might have to contact Stephen O'Grady on this. He is a featured speaker at the conference. excerpt: At first, Chito Manansala (Visa & Sabre) built his Internet transaction processing systems using the venerable Java programming language. But he has since dropped Java and switched to what is widely regarded as The Next Big Thing among Silicon Valley developers. He switched to Node. Node is short for Node.js, a new-age programming platform based on a software engine at the heart of Google’s Chrome browser. But it’s not a browser technology. It’s meant to help build software that sits on a distant server somewhere, feeding an application to your PC or smartphone, and it’s particularly suited to systems like the one Chito Manansala is building — systems that juggle scads of information streaming to and from other sources. In other words, it’s suited to the modern internet. Two years ago, Node was just another open source project. But it has since grown into the development platform of the moment. At Yahoo!, Node underpins “Manhattan,” a fledgling online service for building and hosting mobile applications. Microsoft is offering Node atop Windows Azure, its online service for building and hosting a much beefier breed of business application. And Sabre is just one of a host of big names using the open source platform to erect applications on their own servers. Node is based on the Javascript engine at the heart of Google’s Chrome browser — the engine that executes Javascript code. But it takes Javascript out of the browser and moves it to a new place. The trick with Node is that developers can also use Javascript to build the back-end of an application — the part that runs on a server somewhere. With Node, all those developers who know how to build code for the browser can suddenly build stuff for the server too — at least in theory. It seeks to democratize net programming. “Javascript is ubiquitous,” says Jason Hoffman, the chief technology officer of Joyent. “With the emergence of Web 2.0, it won on the client-side, and it’s 100 percent cross-platform. With Node, we want it to win on the server-side — and be 100 percent cross-platform.” In other words, he wants it to run on any operating system. And it’s well on the way. It began on Linux, and now, in tandem with Microsoft, Joyent has moved it to Windows. This setup is ideal for applications handling a large number of connections to other systems. Chito Manansala’s project is a prime example. It connects not only to a wide range of back-end systems inside Sabre itself, but to myriad systems operated by hotels, airlines, rental car companies, and other travel providers. “We can’t wait for each of those systems to send us what we need — and wait and wait. The back-end system is always the weakest link,” Manansala tells Wired. “With Node, we send the request to the back-end system and then we move on to the next events.” His Node system is currently under test at Sabre, but it’s slated to go live in May.
- - By Gary Edwards
Posted from Diigo. The rest of Open Web group favorite links are here.
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