;General

In many ways the history of NCF parallels that of the internet itself. In the early 1990s NCF was the region’s only service provider and members flocked to it to take advantage of the new technology. Due to its volunteer and donation-based model the organization failed to keep up with the rapid technological changes that occurred in the 1995-2000 period and lost most of its membership to commercial ISPs as a result. Later it floundered trying to make ends meet and finally established itself in the niche market of providing services to disadvantaged segments of the community. NCF board member Jim Elder summarized NCF’s early history: “NCF surfed the wave of internet success in the first-half of the 1990′s, but fell off in 1995 and then tread water. NCF regained some of its ‘mojo’ in the early 2000′s, when funding from Industry Canada’s SmartCapital program and several partners helped NCF modernize its back office system and web pages, bringing NCF firmly into the web era.”

The early days of this free-net featured dial up service and web access using the Lynx browser. Members typically used the system to access usenet, telnet, e-mail and Gopher. As the web became popular many new internet users became NCF members before they went to a PPP provider for graphic access to the web. As the web evolved NCF began offering dial up PPP access.

;1991

National Capital FreeNet was started at luncheon held in October 1991. Jay Weston of the Carleton University Department of Mass Communications and George Frajkor of the School of Journalism and Television Programming invited Dave Sutherland, the director of the university’s Computing and Communication Services Department, to have lunch and discuss the concept of establishing a free-net based on the concept of the Cleveland Free-Net.

In typical university fashion a committee was formed under Sutherland’s leadership and started meeting weekly that same month to lay the groundwork for the free-net. A decision was made to make the endeavour community-based and not part of the university, an approach supported by the university president.

;1992

In the summer of 1992 the free-net was activated as a pilot project, using university computer resources that were underutilized over the summer. With help from Industry Canada Sun MicroSystems was persuaded to donate a computer and Gandalf Technologies provided the first modems.

In September an article appeared on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen by Dominic Lacasse describing the new pilot free-net project. The article includied the dial-in phone number and as a result twenty people per day started signing up as members.

The first NCF board meeting was held on 10 December 1992 with Sutherland as Chairman. At that point the organization had a total of 4 dial-up lines, a logo custom design by a graphic artist and Cdn$2120. The start-up funding was made up of Cdn$1000 dollars from the City of Ottawa Community Health, Cdn$1000 dollars from the Carleton School Board, a private donation of Cdn$50 and Cdn$70 in cash on hand. The board indicated that the “correct spelling for FreeNet was confirmed at this time as ” FreeNet “, with both the “F” and “N” capitalized.”

;1993

National Capital FreeNet had its official public launch on 1 February 1993.

In April 1993 Julie Chahal, head of the NCF’s Public Access Committee presented a public access policy that was accepted by the board. This policy set free public access as a priority for the organization:

By April 1993 NCF had reached the limit of their first server in offering 58 dial-up phone lines and started upgrading to faster 14.4 Kilobaud/sec modems.

In the summer of 1993 the organization had its application for charitable status turned down by Revenue Canada, as did another early freenet in Victoria, BC. NCF spent much of the year in fundraising activities to meet its mandate in the face of rapidly rising demands for service and the need to purchase new hardware on an ongoing basis. The organization hired its first Office Manager, Kyla Huckerby and committed to hiring a System Administrator as well.

Late in the year Ian Allen was hired as NCF’s first System Manager, reporting to the board. By the end of the year NCF had over 11,000 members.

;1994

The association took delivery of its first Sun Microsystems SPARCstation computer and a new terminal server in April. By the end of the first quarter NCF had 19,000 members.

The success of the free public terminals at the Ottawa Library was identified as problematic in a survey of users at that facility. The survey showed that some users were dominating the computers and this made it hard for others to access them. NCF dealt with this through a technological solution of limiting sign-in time on the public computers to one hour and one log-in per day.

1994 also saw NCF make French language access a priority, forming a committee to make recommendations on ensuring that Francophone users in the nation’s capital had equal access to NCF and registering the name ”Libertel” as the French equivalent to ”FreeNet”. By the end of June 1994 NCF had 97 dial-up phone lines expanding to a total of 120.

By the end of 1994 NCF had published an ”Internet Survival Guide” aimed at both members and the general public. The publication was free to members on the internet and sold on paper to non-members. NCF activities had attracted the notice of CBC-TV who completed a news program on the association. Telephone help services were provided at the NCF offices by unpaid volunteers, a practice that continues today. NCF finished the year with 160 dial-up phone lines operational.

One of the early supporters of the NCF community internet project was Dr. José Luis Pardos, the Spanish Ambassador to Canada who brought the Embassy of Spain online using NCF.

;1995

Lisa Donnelly became the organization’s first Executive Director.

At the start of the year members were limited to two hours internet usage per day with a one hour time limit per log-in.

In an attempt to raise funds NCF published a paper cookbook under the title ”From the Kitchens of the National Capital FreeNet”. The project was headed by NCG member Andre Ouellette and came off the presses in May.

In June 1995 the organization adopted a ”Statement of Values” that was based on free and equal access and specifically that there would be no charges for membership or internet use, that the same services be available to all people of the region, unfettered communication and respect for the rights of others. The organization continued to fund its operations primarily from sponsorships, government grants and donations.

By June 1995 NCF had 43,515 registered users and was taking action to make use of the then new World Wide Web though introduction of the Lynx text browser, among other preparations.

The organization had struggled with the need for and drafting of an ”Acceptable Use Policy” (AUP) since its inception and in September 1995 finally adopted one. The AUP made individuals, and not NCF, responsible for their content posted on newsgroups and the web, banned spamming and provided guidance on offensive material and personal attacks. On offensive material it stated:

By the end of the year it was becoming obvious that use of the World Wide Web was where the future lay and not in newsgroups and that the organization was at risk of being left behind and “of becoming a ghetto for the information-poor instead of helping all members of our community participate equally and fully in future information networks.” This challenged the organization to provide ever newer hardware and software while maintaining free community access. These challenges lead to a debate as to whether NCF should be an up-to-date internet service provider for the whole community in competition with the new commercial internet providers or focus on ensuring that the “novice, computer illiterate, and less-well-off segments” have internet access.

;1996

In January 1996 NCF began experimenting with using Solaris to run the news servers, as the organization began the transition from the NCF-developed text-based FreePort based system to the World Wide Web.

The organization also formally adopted a ”Freedom of Expression Policy” that acknowledged the Fundamental Freedoms of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the legal limitations on free speech in Canada and that individuals were responsible for their posted material and not NCF. The policy stated that “however, NCF will cooperate with Canadian legal authorities to identify the person responsible for questionable material. NCF will only remove illegal material when directed to by Canadian legal authorities.”

Hardware was upgraded in 1996 with the addition of Sparc-10 and a Sparc-20 computers. The transitions were complicated by the fact that the new computers ran Solaris, which did not support the existing FreePort, but were necessary to make the transition to the World Wide Web.

The organization had been using a set of rooms at Carleton University since its inception, but the addition of ever more equipment and four staff members put pressure on NCF to find new accommodation. The organization considered offers of space at the university, public libraries and high schools. It became clear that a move would have to happen in the future, but for now additional space was found at the university.

The middle of 1996 saw NCF facing a cash flow shortage. The organization had budgeted on the basis of past levels of donations from individuals and corporate sponsorships and was in a period where new hardware was required while donations dropped off precipitously. In response, the board considered whether to cease expansion plans or move to a new funding model. They considered all options including voluntary contributions, corporate sponsorships, government or foundation sponsorship, advertising, selling products and membership fees. The last option was noted “Some other Freenets do charge a small membership fee. To date, the NCF Board has opposed having any fees. However, given a choice

between continuing to operate with a fee or not continuing to operate, we may want to change our minds.”

The organization decided initially to address funding with a multi-faceted approach that included approaching Mitel and the Royal Bank of Canada for cash sponsorships, approaching several partners for hardware donations, setting up a sponsor database, applying for municipal grants, recognizing donors on-line, updating on-line donation information and creating a webpage on activities and auctioning off fifty-eight pieces of Microsoft software and five pieces of Corel Corporation software.

One aspect of its operations in 1996 that set NCF apart from commercial ISPs was its community outreach in that year. NCF not only established free-use computers in public places, such as libraries, but also made use of volunteers to teach classes, run drop-ins and act as speakers to other organizations. NCF established a formal ”Electronic Resource and Access Centre” staffed by volunteers at the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library.

Early in December the three people who made up the full-time NCF staff moved into a new office, Dunton Tower at Carleton University. This was the first time that all had been located in the same place. Previously only the office manager had an actual office and the remaining staff and volunteers worked from home.

;1997

In January the NCF board voted to reduce the size of the board from 15 to 11 members. This move was suggested by Executive Director Lisa Donnelly with the aim of increasing board effectiveness while requiring less support from the Executive Director.

1997 marked the earliest indication of a spam problem on NCF newsgroups with some members being identified as having cross-posted messages on multiple groups and again over consecutive days. This resulted in a policy to warn and then suspend accounts involved for a minimum of 30 days.

The year also saw many of the earliest complaints by members about spam e-mail. The Executive Director responded saying:

The organization’s financial picture stabilized as members responded well to the requests for donations combined with some austerity measures, such as not replacing one staff person.

In May, Chris Cope was hired as the organization’s second Executive Director, replacing Lisa Donnelly who had resigned after two years in the position.

In June the incoming and outgoing Executive Directors collaborated on project planning for the near future and identified that the organization needed to focus on reliability and network upgrading, improving online service versatility and NCF’s financial picture. Most of the reliability focus centered on the growing problem of spam e-mails. Incoming spam was addressed by blocking spamming domains, a strategy that did reduce the amount of spam being received.

NCF was able to count amongst its key partners, providing hardware, software and financial support: Fulcrum Technologies, Ingenia Corporation, Gandalf Canada, Dantek Computers, Ottawa Public Library, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Hardware Canada Computing, Loran Technologies, Netscape and Carleton University.

In August the organization reported that it had issued 63,785 validated user accounts of which 35,505 were in active use. NCF was providing access via 169 telephone dial-up modems, most of which were operating at 14.4 kbit/s. Towards the end of the year data indicated that of the people in the Ottawa area who used the internet about 13-14% were connecting through NCF.

;1998

On 4 February 1998, NCF completed its Extended Access Project, adding 32 more dial-up PPP telephone lines at Mitel. The project resulted in a total of 201 dial-up lines and modems available for use.

By March 1998 NCF was running 13 computers of various models and a range of operating systems, including Solaris 2.5 and 2.6, SunOS 4.1.2 and 4.1.4, Linux 2.0 and 2.0.33 and Windows 95. The office administration was using a similar range of computers, including a Macintosh and various IBM machines.

25 March saw a major hardware upgrade as one server was changed to a twin hyperSparc 90& MHz donated by Hardware Canada Computing, which replaced a twin SuperSparc 50& MHz processor. The computer also had its operating system changed from SunOS 4.1.3-U1 to Solaris 2.6. The machine also received a new FastEthernet card connected to a 100 Mbit/s port. The result was described as a “dramatic performance increase”. NCF continued to move away from older operating systems to Solaris, with web server experiments carried out on Apache 1.2.6 and Netscape Enterprise Server 3.5.1.

As part of the migration to using the World Wide Web, NCF fielded its first homepage in mid-1998, the result of a design competition amongst members.

Throughout 1998 the organization continued to suffer from declining membership and shrinking donations. Due to being turned down for a number of government grants, NCF was at this time relying almost exclusively on donations to cover expenses. As a result the board considered cutting the number of modems and lines with a view to saving money.

Late in the year NCF started installing new 28.8 kbit/s modems to upgrade the connection speeds available. The board decided not to cut modems as it was felt that better service would attract more members and donations. Long-serving NCF system administrator Andre Dalle was hired on 9 November 1998.

In checking the server system in November 1998 it was discovered that more than half the servers were not Y2K compliant, in particular the ones running SunOS 4.1.4. This required upgrades and patching to be ready for the roll-over to the 21st century.

;1999

In March NCF had 14,517 active member accounts. As a volunteer community organization NCF continued to be well supported by the IT industry with hardware and software donations of older used equipment, often as companies upgraded to newer hardware. For example, in March 1999, Hardware Canada Computing donated a Horizon UltraSparc III UNIX Workstation valued at more than Cdn$8,500. This new computer offered more capabilities than any other the organization had at the time and was employed as a server to consolidate mail, webserver and web-mail services. Other examples include Newbridge Networks donating two Sparc10 workstations, a 20-port Xyplex MX-1620 terminal server and some GeoRim/Es 8-port 10/100 high-speed ethernet switches while Netscape Communications donated the latest version of their Suite-Spot server software. Nevertheless, the organization’s equipment was aging faster than it was being replaced. One report noted that “Three of our four terminal servers were built when 9,600 baud modems were considered “fast”.”

In getting ready for Y2K NCF decided to upgrade all its older servers still running SunOS to Solaris 7. This move required porting the still-popular FreePort text software to the newer UNIX-based system.

Because founding president Dave Sutherland was unable to attend NCF board meetings due to other commitments, the other board members decided to appoint him as “Chairman Emeritus”, to allow him to continue to participate. In his place Michael Mason was elected by the board as acting president and CEO.

;2000

NCF started the year with 10,325 members, the organization having lost many members over the previous two years due to the emergence of commercial ISPs. All servers had been updated to run Solaris 7 as part of Y2K preparations and this greatly simplified system administration and updating. Web hosting moved to a server running Apache 1.3.12 with PHP4 and MySQL.

The new state of the art in dial-up access at this time was 56 kbit/s and NCF struggled with whether they should take the step or not. The largest impediment was the cost of upgrading telephone lines from analog to digital.

In May 2000 President Michael Mason resigned for personal reasons and Graeme Beckett was elected by the board as President to serve until 2002.

In a presentation in July, Executive Director Chris Cope emphasized that NCF must phase out text based services and move everything to web-based services instead. Despite the level of comfort some members had with the text-based FreePort system, it was identified as being unsupportable in the future and that NCF members would be left on the wrong side of the growing digital divide. Cope also emphasized that he thought much of the loss of members to commercial ISPs was due to their desire for web access, not realizing that NCF offered that alongside text-only access. Cope emphasized that NCF had developed a niche market in service provision – low income citizens who were at risk of being left out of the internet and all its benefits. He indicated that these people were in need of training and assistance and that NCF was well placed to provide that to them. He concluded:

In late summer NCF purchased three new 3Com RAS1500 servers to the existing stacks and also received a large quantity of scrapped servers, switches and other equipment from Alcatel, including four 3-slot Tigris access servers. NCF continued to benefit from corporate donations to provide service to its members. The RAS1500 servers proved unreliable and 3Com ended up providing a full refund for them.

Pressed by a continually shrinking membership which then stood at 7,972 members, a drop of 25% over a year earlier, the NCF board voted on 21 November 2000 to terminate the Executive Director’s position due to financial constraints and end Chris Cope’s employment in that position. At the next board meeting the board voted to retain an Executive Director “if it can be afforded”.

At the end of the year the organization set its priorities for the future, deciding that: “NCF’s focus in 2001 is to provide its members with low-cost reliable dialup access to basic internet services, and to organize help for people new to using the internet.”

NCF ended the year with 7590 members.

;2001

NCF hired Ian MacEachern as the new Executive Director starting on 9 April and, following his successful run for the board, elected Chris Cope as President.

NCF adopted a strategy for the future that included:

* “Remain a donation-based organization”

* “Establish NCF as a ‘brand,’ giving it an identity outside the membership”

* “Develop strong and reliable basic services (including spam-reduction)”

* “Streamline registration and donation methods”

* “Make more use of volunteers”

NCF ended the year with 6,774 members.

;2002

With the troublesome 3com RAS1500 servers returned, the refund was used to purchase two refurbished Total Control servers instead. The pool of 14.4 and 28.8 modems was replaced with 33.6 kbit/s modems. SpamAssassin and blacklisting was rolled out to combat the increasing spam problems on the internet with these measures resulting in a dramatic decrease in spam.

To provide more technical assistance with the server upgrades and other issues NCF hired former Nortel employee Glenn Jackman as a second sysadmin in July. Glenn served NCF until late 2005. Executive Director Ian MacEachern, resigned effective 30 November and was replaced by John Selwyn.

Selwyn quickly prepared an ambitious action plan for NCF that included moving to 56 kbit/s digital lines.

Selwyn stated the priorities and the board accepted them as:

NCF membership finished the year at 6,618 members.

;2003

In 2003, under the new Executive Director, the organization received a new streamlined website that included e-commerce capabilities. For the first time new members could sign-up securely online, pay by credit card and complete their inputs to the SQL database directly.

NCF had been located at Carleton University since its inception, but by 2003, due to the double cohort, the university was becoming pressed for space and NCF was forced to look for a new home for its offices. As a temporary measure over the summer the NCF staff worked from home. In the fall office space was found on campus once again.

By July NCF had entirely switched to 56 kbit/s modems and had 184 digital lines available with a total of 276 planned along with V.92 capability, upgraded from V.90. Executive Director John Selwyn said “Modem capacity is critical in member perception of value and quality.”

NCF finished the year with a number of accomplishments completed, including:

* all-digital 56K v.92 modems and additional phone lines and modem-sharing software to allow fair access for everyone during peak times

* on-line database that allowed member processing in minutes

* upgrading and retention of the legacy FreePort text-based system

* in-house development of a custom SpamFilter

* introduction of personalized website members homepage

As a result NCF membership grew to 8,357 by year end, a 26% increase.

;2004

Executive Director John Selwyn started the year with a statement:

Early in the year NCF introduced its own discussion group software that allows members to set up groups and communicate with each other through “threaded” conversations.

A mid-year shortage of donations lead to a “universal participation” expectation, asking all members either provide volunteer time or a cash donation, based on which services they use. All members were expected to participate, unless unable due to “exigent financial circumstances”. A small number of members vocally disagreed with the policy, but the majority supported it and the organization ended the year with donations up 34% in the last quarter over the same period in the previous year and membership up 10% over 2003.

;2005

In March NCF began examining the possibility of offering broadband service to members. Executive Director John Selwyn said:

In August 2005, NCF introduced DSL service for members. The fees from DSL access, set at $29.95 per month, are used to help subsidize the dial-up service for less advantaged residents. DSL technician Daniel Brousseau was hired to provide support to members using DSL.

Throughout the year NCF continued to struggle financially and focused on donation levels and membership campaigns. The bottom line was assisted by the Executive Director not drawing his salary through much of the year and volunteering instead. NCF’s ”child poverty access” and ”members helping members” funds were used to help local citizens in need access the internet. The number of members joining to use the new DSL service was steady and finished the year with about 100 signed up. NCF finished the year with about 8000 members.

;2006

The NCF financial picture started to improve early in the year with more members making donations, plus 235 DSL subscribers signed up. Hardware sales of DSL modems added revenue as well.

In May 2006 the ongoing problems of space constraints at Carleton University forced NCF to seek new office space off-campus. Over the summer the organization located and moved into Suite 302 in the Trailhead building at 1960 Scott Street in the Westboro district of Ottawa. Given the organization’s focus on serving the lower-income residents of the city, the location’s excellent transit connections were a factor in choosing this location.

;2007

There was enough migration of members from dial-up to DSL that in March the board approved the reduction in the number of dial-up lines by 23. NCF also started offering organizational internet domain names for both websites and e-mail.

NCF entered into an agreement with the Employment and Financial Assistance Branch of the City of Ottawa to conduct a trial internet access program for families in financial distress.

At the end of 2007 Executive Director John Selwyn announced his intention to resign his position and return to university in September 2008.

NCF finished the year with 1300 DSL members and 8000 members overall.

;2008

In early May 2008 NCF had a major loss of e-mail when the RAID array suffered a catastrophic failure. E-Mail service was restored within days, but stored e-mail was offline for weeks until restored by an intensive recovery effort. The array was replaced and a back-up array was purchased as well. On 27 May 2008 NCF staff and members attended the Net Neutrality rally on Parliament Hill, John Selwyn spoke at the rally and NCF made a submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission opposing Bell Canada’s bandwidth throttling of DSL service, including NCF’s.

In September 2008 the board hired NCF board member Rowland Few as the new Executive Director.

NCF finished 2008 with 2000 members using DSL service.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article National Capital Freenet, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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view consists of a stored query accessible as a virtual table composed of the result set of a query. Unlike ordinary tables (base tables) in a relational database, a view does not form part of the physical schema: it is a dynamic, virtual table computed or collated from data in the database. Changing the data in a table alters the data shown in subsequent invocations of the view.

Views can provide advantages over tables:

* Views can represent a subset of the data contained in a table

* Views can join and simplify multiple tables into a single virtual table

* Views can act as aggregated tables, where the database engine aggregates data (sum, average etc) and presents the calculated results as part of the data

* Views can hide the complexity of data; for example a view could appear as Sales2000 or Sales2001, transparently partitioning the actual underlying table

* Views take very little space to store; the database contains only the definition of a view, not a copy of all the data it presents

* Depending on the SQL engine used, views can provide extra security

* Views can limit the degree of exposure of a table or tables to the outer world

Just as functions (in programming) can provide abstraction, so database users can create abstraction by using views. In another parallel with functions, database users can manipulate nested views, thus one view can aggregate data from other views. Without the use of views the normalization of databases above second normal form would become much more difficult. Views can make it easier to create lossless join decomposition.

Just as rows in a base table lack any defined ordering, rows available through a view do not appear with any default sorting. A view is a relational table, and the relational model defines a table as a set of rows. Since sets are not ordered – by definition – the rows in a view are not ordered, either. Therefore, an ORDER BY clause in the view definition is meaningless. The SQL standard (SQL:2003) does not allow an ORDER BY clause in a subselect in a CREATE VIEW statement, just as it is not allowed in a CREATE TABLE statement. However, sorted data can be obtained from a view, in the same way as any other table – as part of a query statement. Nevertheless, some DBMS (such as Oracle and SQL Server) allow a view to be created with an ORDER BY clause in a subquery, affecting how data is displayed.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article View (database), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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SMX was designed to embed macros in HTML/XML pages. It originally shipped with the Internet Factory’s Commerce Builder software, a relatively popular web server in the early days of the Internet, due to the ease with which a developer could produce an e-commerce website.

Rather than re-implement websites in more popular languages, like Perl or PHP, a small group of SMX fans decided to re-implement the language itself as an Apache module.

A good example of a macro is %counter. This embeds a simple incremental counter on an HTML page. To include the results of a SQL query on a page, you can simply type %sql(,,%col(1)

) in the middle of an XHTML page.

Owing to the high-level nature of the language, SMX can greatly reduce the programming effort required to build dynamic or database-driven web sites.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article SMX (computer language), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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An APIDS will monitor the dynamic behavior and state of the protocol and will typically consist of a system or agent that would typically sit between a process, or group of servers, monitoring and analyzing the application protocol between two connected devices.

A typical place for an APIDS would be between a web server and the database management system, monitoring the SQL protocol specific to the middleware/business logic as it interacts with the database.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Application protocol-based intrusion detection system, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Autocompletion in database query tools allows the user to autocomplete the table names in an SQL statement and column names of the tables referenced in the SQL statement. As text is typed into the editor, the context of the cursor within the SQL statement provides an indication of whether the user needs a table completion or a table column completion. The table completion provides a list of tables available in the database server the user is connected to. The column completion provides a list of columns for only tables referenced in the SQL statement. Aqua Data Studio is one such application that provides autocomplete in query tools.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Autocomplete, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX, previously named Oracle HTML DB) is a freeware software development environment based on the Oracle database. It allows a very fast development cycle to be achieved to create web based applications. It can be used for departmental-style applications with a dozen users, but can also scale up to handle thousands of users. The framework itself adds as little as 0.04 second of overhead to each page request; how well an application scales is primarily based on the efficiency of the SQL queries used by the application developer.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Oracle Application Express, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Bluefish is a web development editor focused towards the development of dynamic websites. Bluefish supports development in (among others) HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP, C, JavaScript, Java, SQL, Perl, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, Ruby, and shell. Bluefish is available on most platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X, and Windows. Bluefish is developed in C/GTK+ and can be used integrated in GNOME or independent from GNOME. Bluefish fills the niche market between the plain text editors and the full swing IDE: Bluefish is relatively lightweight and has a low learning curve, while still providing many features to support the development of websites.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Bluefish (text editor), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The main mode of retrieving data from an SQL Server database is querying for it. The query is expressed using a variant of SQL called T-SQL, a dialect Microsoft SQL Server shares with Sybase SQL Server due to its legacy. The query declaratively specifies what is to be retrieved. It is processed by the query processor, which figures out the sequence of steps that will be necessary to retrieve the requested data. The sequence of actions necessary to execute a query is called a query plan. There might be multiple ways to process the same query. For example, for a query that contains a join statement and a select statement, executing join on both the tables and then executing select on the results would give the same result as selecting from each table and then executing the join, but result in different execution plans. In such case, SQL Server chooses the plan that is expected to yield the results in the shortest possible time. This is called query optimization and is performed by the query processor itself.

SQL Server includes a cost-based query optimizer which tries to optimize on the cost, in terms of the resources it will take to execute the query. Given a query, the query optimizer looks at the database schema, the database statistics and the system load at that time. It then decides which sequence to access the tables referred in the query, which sequence to execute the operations and what access method to be used to access the tables. For example, if the table has an associated index, whether the index should be used or not – if the index is on a column which is not unique for most of the columns (low “selectivity”), it might not be worthwhile to use the index to access the data. Finally, it decides whether to execute the query concurrently or not. While a concurrent execution is more costly in terms of total processor time, because the execution is actually split to different processors might mean it will execute faster. Once a query plan is generated for a query, it is temporarily cached. For further invocations of the same query, the cached plan is used. Unused plans are discarded after some time.

SQL Server also allows stored procedures to be defined. Stored procedures are parameterized T-SQL queries, that are stored in the server itself (and not issued by the client application as is the case with general queries). Stored procedures can accept values sent by the client as input parameters, and send back results as output parameters. They can call defined functions, and other stored procedures, including the same stored procedure (up to a set number of times). They can be selectively provided access to. Unlike other queries, stored procedures have an associated name, which is used at runtime to resolve into the actual queries. Also because the code need not be sent from the client every time (as it can be accessed by name), it reduces network traffic and somewhat improves performance. Execution plans for stored procedures are also cached as necessary.

SQL CLR

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 includes a component named SQL CLR (“Common Language Runtime”) via which it integrates with .NET Framework. Unlike most other applications that use .NET Framework, SQL Server itself hosts the .NET Framework runtime, i.e., memory, threading and resource management requirements of .NET Framework are satisfied by SQLOS itself, rather than the underlying Windows operating system. SQLOS provides deadlock detection and resolution services for .NET code as well. With SQL CLR, stored procedures and triggers can be written in any managed .NET language, including C# and VB.NET. Managed code can also be used to define UDT’s (user defined types), which can persist in the database. Managed code is compiled to .NET assemblies and after being verified for type safety, registered at the database. After that, they can be invoked like any other procedure. However, only a subset of the Base Class Library is available, when running code under SQL CLR. Most APIs relating to user interface functionality are not available.

When writing code for SQL CLR, data stored in SQL Server databases can be accessed using the ADO.NET APIs like any other managed application that accesses SQL Server data. However, doing that creates a new database session, different from the one in which the code is executing. To avoid this, SQL Server provides some enhancements to the ADO.NET provider that allows the connection to be redirected to the same session which already hosts the running code. Such connections are called context connections and are set by setting context connection parameter to true in the connection string. SQL Server also provides several other enhancements to the ADO.NET API, including classes to work with tabular data or a single row of data as well as classes to work with internal metadata about the data stored in the database. It also provides access to the XML features in SQL Server, including XQuery support. These enhancements are also available in T-SQL Procedures in consequence of the introduction of the new XML Datatype (query,value,nodes functions).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Microsoft SQL Server, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Advantage Database Server is most popular among application developers as a client/server backend solution for shared, networked, standalone, mobile and Internet database applications. ADS is unique among other database offerings because it provides both ISAM table-based and SQL based data access.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Advantage Database Server, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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application server is a software framework dedicated to the efficient execution of procedures (programs, routines, scripts) for supporting the construction of applications. The term was originally used when discussing early client–server server systems and servers that run SQL services and middleware servers to differentiate them from file servers.

Later, the term took on the meaning of web applications, but has since evolved into more of a comprehensive service layer. An application server acts as a set of components accessible to the software developer through an API defined by the platform itself. For web applications, these components are usually performed in the same machine where the web server is running, and their main job is to support the construction of dynamic pages. However, present-day application servers target much more than just web pages generation, they implement services like clustering, fail-over and load-balancing, so developers can be focused just on implementing the business logic.

Normally the term refers to java application servers. When this is the case, the application server behaves like an extended virtual machine for the running applications, handling transparently connections to the database at one side, and connections to the web client at the other.

Other uses of the term can refer to:

# the services that a server makes available

# the computer hardware on which the services run

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Application server, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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