Monty Williams, James Foster, Martin McClure, and myself will be attending the 16th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2008 put on by ESUG. The conference will be held in in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from August 25-29, 2008. Camp Smalltalk will run August 23-24, 2008.

Martin will be giving a talk entitled “GemStone for Dummies”:

[The] presentation is an introduction to GemStone/S from the viewpoint of the Smalltalk programmer, focusing on the differences from other Smalltalk implementations…

Monty will be giving a short talk on MagLev:

MagLev is a new ruby VM developed by Gemstone…

I’ll be giving another version of “Glass: Share Everything”:

Seaside has been characterized as a “heretical” framework because it breaks many of the widely-accepted “best practices” for web applications, including “share as little state as possible.” With GLASS (GemStone/S, Linux, Apache, Seaside, Smalltalk) GemStone takes this heresy to the next level where “everything is shared” - transparently and persistently….

James will be giving a tutorial “Glass hands on”:

This hands-on tutorial will present Seaside and walk through the process of building an application using GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, and Smalltalk). Topics covered include handling user logins, where to put session data vs. application data, building reusable components, styling a web site with CSS, and an introduction to Javascript…

We had an excellent time in Lugano, Switzerland last year and I’m looking forward to another excellent show this year.

Early registration ends on July 15th, so make your plans and register.

For those of you who missed the great conference in Reno this year, you can head over to the STIC site and view the slides for most (if not all) of the presentations.

For the GemStone talks, you can download the slides for my “GLASS: Share Everything” talk or James’ slides from his “Building A Seaside Appplication (with GLASS)” tutorial.

When video and/or audio becomes available, I’ll post another note.

I’ve just published GLASS-dkh.118 (2.2.5) and GLASS.230-dkh.146 (2.3.0 or 1.0beta9). These two versions should be used with GemStone-dkh.279 (Squeak). All three of the versions can be found in the GLASS project on GemSource. If you decide to upgrade to these versions, first load the version on the GemStone-side, commit and logout. Then load GemStone-dkh.279 into your Squeak image and save your Squeak image.

With this update, you will need to do a couple of things to get things to load correctly:

1. Before loading the GLASS package, turn off autoMigrate or evaluate ‘MCPlatformSupport autoMigrate: false.’ The shape and superclass of WAExternalID has been changed in Seaside2.8.2 and the automatic migrate algorithm chokes. As Seaside sessions expire, the old instances will go away.
2. After loading evaluate ‘WAAllTests initialize’ and turn autoMigrate back on.

This release contains the following features:

• Seaside 2.8.2 (Seaside2.8a1-lr.563) merged
• fix bug38366 - blank versions in history list
• fix bug38916: FSSocketServer>>addConnection: and FSSocketServer>>removeConnection: not threadsafe

See GLASS package history for more details.

Between preparations for Smalltalk Solutions and working with Seaside2.9 and 3.0, I’ve been keeping pretty busy. After Smalltalk Solutions, I hope to find time to make another pass at the tools and do a little blogging about GLASS.

It was just over a year ago that we annnounced GLASS at Smalltalk Solutions 2007 (May 2007). We were running on Seaside2.6 and at the time we figured we would be ready for a public beta in about 3 months - ho ho!

By ESUG 2007 (August 2007), we had ported Seaside2.8 to GemStone/S and we had a set of Squeak-based development tools for GLASS. By OOP 2008 (January 2008), we (nearly) had all of the tools implemented in OmniBrowser.

By the end of January we had shipped GemStone/S 64 2.2.4 and made version 1.0beta6 of the appliance available for download to those who had the appropriate hardware and were interested enough to send us an email.

In the last few months, we have addressed commit conflict handling for Seaside, debugging in a multi-vm environment, shipped GemStone/S 64 2.2.5.1 and created 1.0beta9 of the appliance (based on a 2.3 beta).

We’ve had a steady stream of requests for GLASS and now we are prepared to make the beta publicly available. So head on over to the downloads page and get busy! While you are thinking about it join our Beta mailing list, too.

If you are considering putting your GLASS application into production, then you should use version 2.2.5.1. As a released version of GemStone/S 64, 2.2.5.1 has undergone our full QA testing and when future versions of the product become available we will document the procedure for upgrading your GLASS repository to the new version of the product.

I assume that most of you have heard about MagLev which is a product that brings GemStone/S techology to the Ruby world. It is no secret that MagLev leverages a large chunk of the GemStone/S code base, but what hasn’t been emphasized is the fact that we are planning to release a new version (version 3.0) of the GemStone/S 64 product that is based upon the same MagLev vm technology.

Development for the new vm actually began last summer with an effort to speed up the Smalltalk vm by generating native code. Along the way features have been added, like the ability to support the Ruby language:). For Smalltalk execution, it looks like the 3.0 vm will be 1.5 to 2 times faster than the 2.0 vm.

We are shooting at the end of the year for the release of ‘GemStone/S 64 3.0′ and we will have more product details at Smalltalk Solutions.

For Seaside fans, you will be interested to know that I am in the middle of porting Seaside2.9 to version 3.0. I’m down to 4 failed and 15 errors in the Seaside unit tests.

GemStone has received a few requests for training classes and we are close to having enough students to offer classes (we must have at least 3 students per class).

If you are interested in GemStone training in the next 3 months or so, please contact Norm Green (send mail and Norm will get back to you). Course descriptions are shown below.

—————————————————————————
Course 1: GemStone/S Fundamentals

GemStone’s most popular course is a combination of three introductory offerings presented together over a 4 day period. The student learns fundamental concepts and issues associated with using GemStone, including shared access to business objects, partitioning applications and basic system management. The instruction format is a mix of lecture and hands-on exercises to provide the student with actual programming experience.

GemStone highly recommends that every person involved in a GemStone project take this course to establish a baseline of knowledge within the development team.

You Should Take This Course If You:
* Are or will be participating in a GemStone project.
* Want to understand fundamental GemStone concepts.
* Seek a baseline of GemStone programming and basic system management knowledge.
Prerequisites For This Course Are:
* An understanding of object-oriented architecture and design
* A working knowledge of Cincom VisualWorks(r) Smalltalk or Instantiations VisualAge(r) Smalltalk
This Course Will Teach You About:
Concepts
* Product overview
* The session model
* Transactions and concurrency
* User and object-level security
* System management tasks
GemBuilder for Smalltalk
* Application development tools
* Partitioning applications between client and server
* Working with connectors
* Managing replication and forwarding
* Implementing transaction and concurrency strategies
* Starting sessions programmatically
* Optimizing queries
* Object notification and inter-session signaling
Basic System Management
* System management tools
* Installation and configuration
* System architecture, files and processes
* Storage management
* Backup and recovery
* Garbage collection
* System monitoring
Course Duration: 4 days.
Course Fees: $2,300 per attendee. Class size is limited to 10.

—————————————————————————-
Course 2: GemStone/S Advanced Programming Practices

This is the most popular follow on class for Smalltalk server architects, developers, designers, and implementers. This five day class was originally developed for GemStone’s own Smalltalk server consultants to quickly learn the tips, tricks and techniques that result in stable, scalable, and performant Smalltalk server production applications.

You should take this Course If You:
* Have significant Smalltalk server application development experience
* Are currently involved in designing or architecting a GemStone project
* Seek advanced GemStone server design and implementation practices
Prerequisites For this Course Are:
* Attend Fundamentals of GemStone/S course
* Have several months of GemStone application development experience
BACKGROUNDER:
This course was originally developed for GemStone’s own internal use to provide rapid education and training to its consultants. The know-how of GemStone’s consulting force has been captured in this intensive program. The course’s objectives are to transfer significant technical information and know-how to the experienced GemStone user in a short period of time. Students will be exposed to advanced programming techniques and methodologies, as well as a wealth of technical insight into the workings of GemStone.

This Course Will Teach You About
* GemStone’s server architecture
* The GemBuilder for Smalltalk architecture
* Versioning and multi-user issues
* Application partitioning methodologies
* Client-server optimization techniques
* Essential server performance enhancements
* Performance and system analysis
* Using blocks wisely
* Transaction design and methodologies
* Collection design and implementation
* Using clustering techniques
TOOLKITS INCLUDED:
A number of GemStone Professional Services’ Toolkits are provided and/or explained during the course. These are the same tools used by GemStone consultants when performing customer engagements:

* ClassCheck
* GSCacheProfiler
* Garbage Probe
* ProfMonitor
* AdvancedProfMonitor
* Transaction Probe
* PageInventory
* GciCall Tracking
Course Duration: 5 days.
Course Fees: Open Enrollment: $3,300 per attendee. Class size is limited to 10.
—————————————————————————

I’ve just published GLASS-dkh.117 (2.2.5) and GLASS.230-dkh.140 (2.3.0). These two versions should be used with GemStone-dkh.276GemStone-dkh.278 (Squeak). All three of the versions can be found in the GLASS project on GemSource. If you decide to upgrade to these versions, first load the version on the GemStone-side, commit and logout. Then load GemStone-dkh.276 into your Squeak image and save your Squeak image.

I know, I know, just minutes after announcing the availability of a new version of the appliance I publish a set of new packages….So shoot me! Actually, I don’t anticipate that you’ll be that interested in this particular set of versions, since you might not be able to tell that I’ve made any changes at all: I’ve simply taken the first step in heading towards getting the OB-Enhancements packages and friends loaded into GLASS.

With these versions I have started using a branch of the OB-Standard package instead of the OG-Standard package, so only folks like Liliana and Otto from Finworks will really be interested.

I haven’t had a chance to try loading OB-Enhancements, yet - I’ll save that for next week!

[Updated 5/10/2008 - use version GemStone-dkh.278 (needed for 2.3) and load OG-AllTests-dkh.14 (in the GemStone Tools project) if you want to run the OmniBrowser tests in GemStone)].

After a few hitches in our giddyup, we are pleased to announce the availability of the 1.0Beta9 GLASS appliance. The appliance is based upon GemStone/S 64 Version 2.3 Beta 1. We have published the download instructions (join our Beta mailing list) or you can send mail to request download instructions. To make sure that your hardware can run VMWare, double check the hardware requirements.

In the future, when I announce the availability of a new GLASS package in a GLASS Beta Update post we plan on making a new version of the appliance available as well.

The fabled 2.3 beta release of GemStone/S 64 is finally available for download (contact Monty Williams or send mail for download instructions) .

The beta includes the following features:

1. Primitive support for UTF8 encoding (100x faster than Smalltalk-based algorithm).
2. Primitive support for HTML encoding.
3. Thread local support for GsProcess and continuations. Thread locals are being used in Seaside2.9.
4. Improved ProfMonitor output code moved from GLASS-only to base image.

The beta is shipped with GLASS.230-dkh.130 and GemStone-dkh.270 (both can be found in the GLASS project on GemSource). GLASS.230-dkh.130 is equivalent to GLASS-dkh.114, except for references to the UTF8 and HTML encoding primitives.

A version of the appliance based upon 2.3 beta 1 will be available shortly.

I’ll be giving a technical presentation at Smalltalk Solutions entitled “GLASS: Share Everything”:

Seaside has been characterized as a “heretical” framework because it breaks many of the widely-accepted “best practices” for web applications, including “share as little state as possible.” With GLASS (GemStone/S, Linux, Apache, Seaside, Smalltalk) GemStone takes this heresy to the next level where “everything is shared” - transparently and persistently….

According to the preliminary schedule, I will be talking on June 20th from 9:15am to 10:00am.

James Foster will be giving a tutorial entitled “Building a Seaside Application (with GLASS)”:

This hands-on tutorial will present Seaside and walk through the process of building an application using GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, and Smalltalk). Topics covered include handling user logins, where to put session data vs. application data, building reusable components, styling a web site with CSS, and an introduction to Javascript.

James’ tutorial is scheduled for June 19th from 1:30pm to 5:00pm.

The conference will be held June 18-21, 2008 in Reno, Nevada, so if you haven’t already signed up, get busy and register!