Business Applied X Objects

Tiger Server on my Aluminum MacBook

2010-03-24T11:35:00.002-06:00

I am glad to say that (finally) I found a way to run Tiger Server on my aluminum MacBook... I do so via VMware Fusion 3...

It seems that Apple explicitly forbids to virtualise the "user" version of their legacy OSes, but NO the server version of them... surprisingly, Parallels do not implement such a possibility while VMware does...

That is a good reason —at least to me— to go, from now on, with VMware instead of parallels.

Once the server was installed, can we hack it to run also the "user" version?
Let us try...

(I'll be back with more on the subject later ;^)

OpenStep 4.2 on Leopard via Parallels 4

2009-08-24T19:24:00.002-05:00

I am glad to say that it is possible install and run OpenStep 4.2 on my Aluminum MacBook (Leopard 7) via Parallels 4. Here are the step-by-step instructions to do so.

0. download the floppy-images from Apple's support area
1. change the extension of such images from .floppyimage to .fdd
2. insert the OPENSTEP_4.2 install CD. It will not be recognised by Leopard... simply ignore that.
3. run Parallels (4.0.3844) and click on the menu File>New Virtual Machine...
4. skip detection
5. select "type: other"... (continue)
6. select "custom"...
7. assign 64 Mb of RAM (this is enough and can be change later)...
8. select "New image file"...
9. assign a size of 2.0 Gb and select "Plain disk"...
10. (I do not know yet how to handle network... I used the default)...
11. I used "Virtual machine"...
12. give a name to your machine (e.g., OpenStep 4.2); in "More Options" you can share it...
13. create the machine... start.

at first it will not boot since you have to
14. click on the menu Devices>Floppy Disk>Connect image... and double-click on 4.2_Install_Disk.fdd
15. click on the menu Virtual Machine>Reset

you may recognise at this point the OPENSTEP boot1... wait for the installer to start.

16. select language and keyboard...
17. confirm installation...
18. click on menu Devices>Floppy Disk>Connect image... and double-click on 4.2_Driver_Disk.fdd
19. press Return

here comes the tricky part
20. select the "EIDE and ATAPI Device Controller (v4.01)" to control the CD-ROM; for, press: 7 return 7 return 6 return
21. do the same for the Hard Disk... 7 R 7 R 6 R
22. continue (i.e., press 1 return)

from there, the rest is as usual:
23. 1 R 1 R 1 R (unless you want to do something fancy)...

The next step is to figure out how to get a better resolution, sound and network... let's try!!

No Tiger on my Aluminum MacBook

2009-06-27T08:56:00.003-05:00

I cannot be live it... there is no version of Tiger which runs on my new MacBook Aluminum...

Sometimes Apple take decisions I really do not end to understand...

I had tried all small tricks I know, with out success... even tried Parallels 4, but it is explicitly forbidden to run Tiger on it...

shame on Apple

Alex's EOModeler

2009-04-30T16:30:00.005-05:00

The good news about AJRDatabase is that the compiled version at SourceForge simply runs on Leopard. For, simply copy the EOModeler application to your ~/Developer/Applications folder, the AJRFoundation, AJRInterface, EOAccess and EOControl frameworks to your ~/Library/Frameworks folder, and the Postgres eoadaptor to your ~/Library/Database Adaptors folder... if you have a running Postgres database, you will be able to connect and reverse engine it after double-clicking on Alex's tool.

Nice work!!!

Now I will need to find or develop a Sybase eoadaptor... I hope it is not another nightmare...

AJRDatabase; Leopard Vs. Tiger

2009-04-13T11:38:00.004-05:00

More frustration...
the EOModeler of Alex was done in an old OS X version and uses some methods which had been deprecated in 10.4 (e.g., the NSFont method - (CGFloat)widthOfString:(NSString *)aString); even though it compile in Tiger, it does not in Leopard. So, I will have to debug his code and "repair" it before I can compile-and-run it into Leopard.

My PowerBook died

2009-03-11T10:27:00.005-06:00

After fighting with the installation of GNUstep, and just before the national summit of combinatorics in Hermosillo, Sonora, my old Power Book suicide by dropping itself from my bed to the floor...
Since I had to give a talk during the summit, I'd run to the shop and bought a new Intel 2.4 MacBook. While reinstalling everything in it, I received a nice link in the EOF mail-list at omnigroup: GNUstepWeb.
A nice installer with compiled binaries for Tiger and Leopard can be found there at the time, and after an easy install procedure, an Xcode template for a web-app can be found by the new-project wizard... however I tried the link today but, either the server is down, or the page disappear, or something went wrong... so I decided to share the Leopard version in my public folder: MyGNUstepWeb.
The next step is to code a Sybase adaptor...

no GDL2 on macports

2009-02-16T18:29:00.003-06:00

I was able to install all dependencies of GDL2, but GDL2 it self... macports was unable to load it from nowhere...
also, I'd try to run an app from gnustep (Grom to be precise) and it simply did not started...

...all this GNUstep thing was driving me crazy, so I went to my office at ENSA and start all over, but in my Tiger Server (10.4.11)... there the history was completely different: instead of using macports, I downloaded directly from GNUstep ftp server gnustep-make, gnustep-base and gnustep-dl2, apply a couple of patches provided by Adam Fedor (Mil Gracias ;^) and now GDL2 is installed...

NeXT Step: learn how to integrate it with Cocoa...

gcc42 done...

2009-02-15T07:06:00.006-06:00

Finally, I got the desired:
---> Staging gcc42 into destroot ---> Installing gcc42 @4.2.4_1+darwin_7 ---> Activating gcc42 @4.2.4_1+darwin_7 ---> Cleaning gcc42 Fermat:/opt/local/var/macports sa$

In the meanwhile I found the following comment on the web:
>> ---> Building gcc42 with target all >> >> So all is going well until this line showed up and is taking absolute >> age....what should I do? should I terminate it and try again? > > gcc42 takes about 6 hours to compile on a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4, so > on your 1 GHZ PowerBook G4 I would expect it to take about 9 hours. > You should also have at least 3GB of free hard drive space.
So, in my 400 MHz PowerBook G3 I supposed it will take forever... but it took just a finite amount of time!

Today I will try to end the installation of GDL2...

GNUstep DL2

2009-02-14T20:31:00.005-06:00

At the same time I am trying ARJDatabase in the office, I am trying to install GNUstep-DL2 into my PowerBook; however, several errors had occurred —I wonder why all these open projects are so difficult to make...

One needed step is to install gcc42 (I am using macports for that) but it hangs, for hours, while it displays

--->  Building gcc42

... so far, I'd just found the following comment which encourages me to wait until tomorrow before killing the cc1 process running behind the scene...
(a ticket of macports)

OpenSource EOF

2009-02-09T15:00:00.004-06:00

So long without writing here... but this nightmare took me too much of my time...
In the meantime I had been learning and applying the so called DNA Computing; interesting , but not the aim of these lines.

I found an open implementation of Apple's Objective-C EOF in SourceForge.net... it includes source for an EOModeler, for some Adaptors, and for the frameworks EOAccess and EOControl. Even I am missing the EOInterface layer, that may be replaced with Cocoa Bindings... hopefully!

Copyright ®

2007-07-13T15:44:00.000-05:00

Just for the record:

I always forget how to change the classic __My Company__ to my company's name... here is how!

In the file

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Xcode.plist

add the following property:

PBXCustomTemplateMacroDefinitions   Dictionary
   ORGANIZATIONNAME   String  Business Applied C Objects

First things first

2007-07-07T12:37:00.000-05:00

In order to communicate with an EOEditingContext through a web service, the first step is to create a Java object to wrap it, say BAEditingContext.java. Mine, looks like:

public class BAEditingContext {
   public EOEditingContext eoec;
   public BAEditingContext() {
      super();
      eoec = new EOEditingContext();
   }
   public String test(){
      return eoec.toString();
   }
}

We can check that initialisation was correct through the test method (recall how to publish a method in Consuming Calculator): add a line of the form

NSLog(@"eoec = %@",[BAEditingContextService test]);

and you will receive in your console something like

... eoec = com.webobjects.eocontrol.EOEditingContext@998537

The question now is: how to consume Enterprise Objects?
as serialised objects?
as dictionaries?

Let us see how does EOCustomObject traverses the service...

Cannot publish an EOEditingContext

2007-07-05T12:55:00.000-05:00

While publishing, trough a WebService, an EOEditingContext (or a "son" of it), and trying to get the description of the service via


Szamitogep# /Developer/Tools/WSMakeStubs
   -x ObjC
   -name BAEditingContext
   -url  http://192.168.1.8:51123/cgi-bin/WebObjects/
      EditingContextService.woa/ws/BAEditingContext?wsdl

I got the following error:
- The class java.lang.Class is defined in a java or javax package and cannot be converted into an xml schema type. An xml schema anyType will be used to define this class in the wsdl file. - The class com.webobjects.eocontrol.EOKeyValueUnarchiver does not contain a default constructor, which is a requirement for a bean class. The class cannot be converted into an xml schema type... - The class java.lang.Number is defined in a java or javax package and cannot be converted into an xml schema type... - The class com.webobjects.foundation.NSNotification does not contain a default constructor, which is a requirement for a bean class. The class cannot be converted into an xml schema type... - The class java.lang.Throwable is defined in a java or javax package and cannot be converted into an xml schema type... ...

(o sea de que como quien dice)
¡NOT GOOD!

Let us try by wrapping it...

So far, no good solution

2007-07-02T13:02:00.000-05:00

Long time with out writing... but I had not found nothing, good enough, to bring back EOF to the Desktop.
Andrew Lindesay claims that he is developping his own JSON-RPC to this end, but I had not found it easy to use, and, to be honest, I am not sure it is "the right way"; but, if you want to give it a try, go to lindesay.co.nz.

The main obstruction, so far, to substitute Cocoa EOF with WO Services has been that I had not found how to publish an EOEditingContext easily... let us try again...

Calculator.java revisted

2006-11-05T14:23:00.001-06:00

As discussed yesterday, while implementing the CalulatorService, doubles are not good enough for precision —see the following lecture recommended by Ken Anderson: Floating point.

To fix this problem, the first thing to do is to re-implement the Calculator.java object to accept and return strings, instead of doubles, and operate with BigDecimals:

import java.math.BigDecimal;

public class Calculator extends Object {

  public static String add(String addend1, String addend2) {
        
        BigDecimal x = new BigDecimal(addend1);
        BigDecimal y = new BigDecimal(addend2);
        BigDecimal z = x.add(y);
        
        return z.toString();
  }

Re-make the stubs and then, re-implement our CPO.m to use, also, strings:

@implementation CPO
- (IBAction)add:(id)sender
{
 id x = [[form cellAtIndex:0] stringValue];
 id y = [[form cellAtIndex:1] stringValue];
 id z = [CalculatorService add:x in_addend2:y];
 
 [[form cellAtIndex:2] setStringValue:z];
}
@end

I wonder... how does types travel through the Web Service protocols?
Let us find out...

Consuming Calculator.java WS

2006-11-04T16:40:00.000-06:00

A well-known example, which is included in /Developer/ADC Reference Library/documentation/WebObjects/Web_Services/Web_Services.tar.gz, is a simple Calculator. To publish it is as simple as compile and run... however, to consume it inside Cocoa requires some extra knowledge; let us focus on the add method —the rest is completely analogous.

Once the service is running, the first step is to produce the "stubs"; this can be done using the command-line argument

Szamitogep# /Developer/Tools/WSMakeStubs
   -x ObjC
   -name Calculator
   -url http://localhost:4210/WebObjects/
      Calculator.woa/ws/Calculator?wsdl

which generates two objects: WSGeneratedObj.m and Calculator.m

Include these objects in a new Cocoa App project. Run Interface Builder by double-clicking the MainMenu.nib icon and, in the classes pane, create a new object, say CPO, with an NSForm *form outlet and an add: action. Create files, instantiate and connect. (of course I am supposing that you know how to do these =:o)

In the implementation of the -add: method, write the obvious line:

[[form cellAtIndex:2]
    setDoubleValue:[[CalculatorService
               add:[[form cellAtIndex:0] doubleValue]
        in_addend2:[[form cellAtIndex:1] doubleValue]]
                   doubleValue]];

compile and run... you see?
It does not work!!

The problem is in the implementation of the -resultValue method of the object add:WSGeneratedObj (defined in Calculator.m, and generated by WSMakeStubs). If you change that implementation line from

return ... objectForKey: @"addReturn"];

return ... objectForKey: @"ns1:addReturn"];

it will work...

But, how to find out the correct key to use?

Simple... just before the return line of the -getResultDictionary method, inside WSGeneratedObj.m, add the line

NSLog(@"getResultDictionary>fResult = %@",fResult);

and bingo!

Finally, just for the record: I used this service to add 3.4 to 6.6... can you guess the result? Wrong! Sadly, my computer, a G4 Mac mini, does not know how to add... it brings as a result

9.999998099999999

Intel inside: first view

2006-11-01T16:22:00.000-06:00

I'd just acquired my first Intel Mac; a modest 17" super iMac running a 2 GHz Xeon. My first surprise was to find Xcode 2.4 with WO included. My second surprise was to find out that Cocoa EO remains there; even more surprising was that, by importing and compiling an "old" Cocoa EO project, the app simply runs... this means that the Java Bridge remains there which implies, by the way, that I can slow down my discovery on how to replace it.

The bad news is that new projects —created inside the Intel machine— does not compile (yet) in a PPC machine... I am not sure about the reasons, but I will find out!

For the record: to start a new Cocoa EO app inside this new machine was not straight forward. Here the steps to accomplish this.

1. install Xcode and WebObjects.
2. run Interface Builder and import the EnterpriseObjects.palette (which is inside /Developer/Extras/Palettes).
3. create or import an EOModel.
4. in Finder, go to
/Library/Application Support/Apple/Developer Tools/Project Templates/Application/Cocoa-Java Application/
and change the extension of the file —indeed the folder— CocoaApp.xcodeproj to .pbproj .
5. run Xcode and create a new project of type
Cocoa Enterprise Objects Application
and follow the wizard's instructions.
6. define your interface and add your code.
7. compile and run.

One more thing... for me was more convenient to change a Preference: in the File Types pane, change the folders>wrapper>wraper.eomodel to be edited with EOModeler (which is inside the folder /Developer/Applications/WebObjects/).

Suerte!

What's NeXT?

2006-10-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

The next step to successfully use Web Services to substitute Cocoa EOF is to publish into a service an EOEditingContext. In this way, Core Data should be able to use EOF, via those services offered by the Editing Context, as a persistence media.

I am not quite sure where to put the line (the service); on top of the Editing Context? or, even below it?
To transfer Enterprise Objects? or, shall I transfer Dictionaries?... it will depend in the performance... we will see.

By the moment, the idea is to have, in the server side, the persistence mechanisms offered by EOF; and in the client side, a Cocoa app running Core Data to manage Display Groups and all the consistency necessary in a complex db-model. For, the model will have to be duplicated in the two formats: .eomodeld and .xcdatamodel ...

... welcome to a new nightmare!

Finally

2006-10-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

It was much more easy than I thought...
following LeBer's advice, I went to the wikibooks and found that I better use the tool /Developer/Tools/WSMakeStubs.
It creates two objects (in my case Account.[hm] and WSGeneratedObject.[hm]) which I simply imported in a new project and, via some controller, they can invoke the service... I had to write the following two lines of code to see what was going on:

@implementation CPO
- (IBAction)servicio:(id)sender
{
 id valor = [AccManagerService newAcc:[nombre stringValue]
                               in_who:[quien stringValue]];
 NSRunAlertPanel(@"Servicio",
                 @"El valor es = %@",
                 nil,nil,nil,valor);
}
@end

Nice and beauty...

I am back...

2006-09-17T10:18:00.000-05:00

I had been away trying to tame a PLC which call for me to remember how to code in binary... finally the beast surrender.

So, now I have again time to continue my experiments with Web Services. An e-friend from WOdev-list at apple (David LeBer) suggests the following lecture:
Consuming with WebServicesCore.framework
I will take a look and come back later!

Direct to Web Services: first view

2006-08-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

Well, what can I say, with Direct2... life is ease. I had created a simple service just in few minutes. I created a new database — in my Sybase server — with 3 tables, each adopting a basic BAProtocol, establishing a 3-depth 1toN relation:

Account<—>>Document<—>>Details

EOModeler did its work — I really hope Apple is planning a good alternative to this, now that they are deprecating the Java Bridge. From there, Xcode nicely creates a Web service which can be customised with WebServicesAssistant. Inside the later I created a service called newAcc — which inserts a new account...

All this took me no more than 40 minutes... not bad for a completely new newbie =;o)

Now I just have to have to learn how to consume this service within Cocoa... so, let's try!

Web Services Documentation.

2006-08-19T19:42:00.000-05:00

I found that the basic references to start to integrate WO's Web Service Provider with Cocoa Web Service Consumer are WebObjects Web Services and Cocoa Web Services, respectively. Both represent long readings, so I will have to be back later...

...some indications that this can be done are:

Jeremy's Little Corner...
iTod Hi-Fi

Where to go from CEO?

2006-08-19T11:46:00.000-05:00

My first impression is that there is no other technology like Cocoa EO so integrated to OS X, however I may be wrong. In the last two releases of the OS X, vers. 3 and 4 (better known as Panther and Tiger, resp.), two nice technologies had been included in the "free" DevTools: namely, Bindings and Core Data. Watching the big picture, these frameworks looks like an attempt from Apple to rediscover Enterprise Objects, but now fully integrated into Cocoa — like if they were porting EOF back from Java to Objective-C again. To this to become a reality, one piece is still missing: the connectivity to a RDBM (like Sybase, Oracle, MySQL...); in EO terms, EOAccess layer...

The question is now: is Apple including this missing piece into Leopard (OS X 10.5)? NDA aside, no one knows for sure. WWDC was held a few days ago and, at least in the public statement, there is no light that this will happen soon.

On the other hand, Web Objects has become a natural citizen of OS X since it was integrated to Tiger — into Xcode 2.2.x — and it includes a nice technology called Web services, which is based on SOAP. I have not tried yet, but it may be a possibility to code a "service provider/consumer framework" to emulate the Access layer... let us try that for the moment.

On Java & Objective-C

2006-08-17T11:34:00.000-05:00

The main source of Objective-C frameworks is Steve Jobs and his team. They started to use this language since they were selling the NeXT machine. When NeXT buys Apple (for a negative amount of money ;^) they recompiled the operating system OpenStep to run into Apple's hardware; since then, it is know as Mac OS X. These are all old news. One more: Java becomes fashioned more or less in the same time — a bit before, to be more precise.

NeXT was forced to move one of its most valuable pieces of software, WebObjects, from Objective-C to Java; but they wanted to keep it "native" inside OS X... so, they coded the so called Java Bridge, a (never too nice, but useful) piece of software which allows to communicate the JVM and the Obj-C runtime. With this tool at hand it is possible to code (to develop) applications which have the beauty interfaces (and useful) frameworks of Cocoa (the front-end of OS X) and have also all the database connectivity developed for WebObjects, the so called Enterprise Objects Framework. The result: the best client/server apps in the market.

The bad news (well, not so new) is that Apple is giving up on the Java Bridge... this means that I will have to port all my code to use something else in order to provide nice and useful interfaces to my users, while keeping the database connectivity easy to manage... not an easy task, but it has to be done =:o(