4J

For those who have worked with SQLRelay before, you already know the power of this tool. For those who don't, I suggest you have a look at this great database tool.

I have compared the basic performance of the two primary Perl interfaces: 1) the SQLRelay supplied interface and 2) the DBI bindings

Granted - I know that DBI has more overhead, but I wanted to know what the performance difference were.

Results

Here are some RAW results: I have run 10 tests each, first comparing the SQLRelay interface, and then DBI:

SQLRelay:

TEST 1 START
RUN 1 -> time =0.0988240242004395
RUN 2 -> time =0.119891881942749
RUN 3 -> time =0.0670750141143799
RUN 4 -> time =0.0965390205383301
RUN 5 -> time =0.108819961547852
RUN 6 -> time =0.0503008365631104
RUN 7 -> time =0.0784649848937988
RUN 8 -> time =0.113129854202271
RUN 9 -> time =0.0531101226806641
RUN 10 -> time =0.0935280323028564

TEST 1 AVG=0.087968373298645

Next is the DBI test:

TEST 2 START
RUN 1 -> time =0.136901140213013
RUN 2 -> time =0.0799510478973389
RUN 3 -> time =0.0771389007568359
RUN 4 -> time =0.150060892105103
RUN 5 -> time =0.0818459987640381
RUN 6 -> time =0.130953788757324
RUN 7 -> time =0.0769519805908203
RUN 8 -> time =0.129808902740479
RUN 9 -> time =0.0768680572509766
RUN 10 -> time =0.135869026184082

TEST 2 AVG=0.107634973526001

Conclusions

The tests confirm that using the native SQLRelay Perl interface does provide a considerable performance advantage over the DBI interface. However, the DBI interface is much more portable.

This is rather interesting - I wonder if it could be legally implemented anywhere :-)

Story: http://www.nextenergynews.com/

/. Discussion: http://slashdot.org/

Here are the basics specs:

• 200KW
• 40 year life span
• Completely self sustained (sealed) unit
• No additional cooling required

Perl is 20 years old, and a new version was released on the birthday.

Well - at this rate I don't know if Perl 6 will ever get going. One thing I noticed is that some of the new commands in Perl 6 is making their way into the Perl 5 source - I think this is a could thing as it will make the transition to Perl 6 (when it eventually becomes available) much smoother.

The change log can be found here...

The twisted /. community also had their say on this thread...

Happy Perl-ing :-)

PS: I need to check out the suggestion from Brian about the Strawberry Perl distribution for Windows. Aparently it includes a C compiler, but as Brian suggested, we may need to wait a while for Perl 5.10 to get in the Strawberry build.

Right now, South Africa is in the middle of a huge energy crisis - there is just not enough electricity to go around. The result is wide spread regular power outages, which has effected businesses, education, health care and just about every other industry you can think about.

The problem also hit home, in that I could see how it effected my wife's small business which she runs from home. We have implemented some measures, like generators and UPS equipment to carry the business through the average of 2 hours of outages per day. The bigger problem however, is that other businesses which my wife depend on do not employ measures to help them during power outages, so that leaves my wife still in a pickle.

Now I see that the SA government have approved some budget for the building of new power plants. It is amazing for me to see that not only is it like a decade late to make the decision, but they still insists on coal fuel electricity generation! I realize that for now we still have plenty of coal reserves - but it's going to run dry at some point - probably still in our life time.

So why don't they consider alternative sources of energy? South Africa is known for a couple of unique features that make for ideal alternative energy sources:

• We have over 2700km coast line - ideal for wave energy extraction projects
• We have sunshine - lots of it! Especially in winter months.
• We have strong winds in many parts, especially along the various mountain ranges running the length of the country (the Drakensberg in particular)
• We have LOTS of uranium (although it's not a "clean" energy source, I think it's proven to be relatively safe if well managed)

What are we to do? I am particularly interested in the potential of our oceans. I have read today more about the topic, and I would like to share just a couple of the more interesting ones:

• Here is a Wikipedia page about wave power
• Here is a BBC news article about an actual deployment
• Another interesting presentation (PDF) on the topic

As you can see - there is a lot of information around.

I know I can do more myself around home, and every so often I implement something new. For example, our home now use exclusively the new 16w or 24w globes (previously we had 60w or 100w globes). I also invested in a more economical car. Progress is slow, but we are getting there. Now I just hope the goverment can also wake up to the challenges.

The Google techies have done it again: a great practical tool to create charts.

Check it out at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Here is a sample chart:



The above chart was generated using the following URL: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World

It's really that simple!

Have fun.