Series 1 - post 1
Mood:
hug me
Now Playing: The Pie Eyed Piper - Townsfolk who loved to dance refuse to pay the band
Topic: Calamity
I decided to post a promised rackdown on a concept I've been waiting to show in the press. Now that it has (see this: http://weblog.infoworld.com/yager/archives/2007/07/web_20_needs_ad.html - again, thanks to POSCASH for understanding what this article is saying. POS is a fine example of our PHeaven BootUpTheButt Camp techno-novices who fundamentally leap-frog the existing technological world with a buzzword grasp that turns him into an information surgeon. [Tissue sample, lunch meat, if you slice the stuff thin and can look at it in an educated way, you end up with a happy customer instead a piece of dead meat]) I think a bit of education per patent examination will enlighten the reader's way a bit more.
I've dispensed with the comic book font for these Series posts (except for a friendly howdy or a sardonic "what the c:!$$$ are you people doing?") for clarity and reading ease and look forward to plotting out what VCSY technology means to the web world.
Thanks for your kind attention.
Series 1 - post 1. How to step over a stream.
Rule 0. Words that are in () are for your edification. (Don't go talking like that in a technological crowd because they will think you're a freak. It hurts feelings. Like asking for a boiled weinie in a Sushi restaurant.)
Rule 1. When it says ('reference:'), get your crackedass to a search engine and search the words after that reference.
Rule 2. Words that are in Rule 1 format but are not reference you can read at leisure. It will be better to read Rule 1 subjects first so you can have a background sufficient for appreciating Rule 2.
Rule 3. Words in "" are 'sardonic'.
(Nobody expects you to understand any of what you read, but we expect you to read it. It's the least you can do for the work we've put out for no pay. It will enrich your understanding of the industry [as it can be best read from a 15,000 foot level while watching the activity of everybody involved down there at 3000.] Read wikipedia if you can find one on the word.
What you will have after that is a 'buzzword' that people use as a shorthand to explain a very large concept in a word or phrase. Other's will understand, to some degree, the background information need to fully describe that buzzword subject, application and discipline in that order.
Some understand a substantial amount.
Some are like you.
It doesn't matter AS LONG AS YOU KNOW HOW THE BUZZWORD SUBJECT WORKS. If you don't STFU and listen. You will learn over time and then you can be a useful part of the conversation. Thank you for your kind attention. Now, on with the show and tell.)
Begin A:
Short story (from here to Mom's house):
One thing you need to remember and watch in the days, weeks, months and years ahead is this: AJAX = 7,076,521
What does that mean? It means, when AJAX evolves into an ultimately useful item, it will have succeeded in duplicating the claims of patent 7,076,521
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Long story (from zero to first stage cutoff):
So, what does that mean? It means the work MSFT did in XMLhttp to build a client on the browser ultimately evolved into something that would listen for a call from the server while it sat on the browser acting as a client.
The button or image or hyperlink you pressed could send a signal to the server saying, hey, whatever display object this item is connected so, send that the information related to this thing (button, etc).
The server would then do whatever work it took to find that information (data processed) and would then send JUST THAT data (information transported) to the item on the page (usually a text box - any changing text on a web page is most likely in a text box) which would usually display the information in context with the rest of the page (since the textbox is supposed to be a part of the formatted content on the page).
So those are the steps and here is what that accomplished:
In traditional webpage programming, without such a client you have to send the requested information embedded in an entire copy of the web page. That is the cause of the latency (that delay between the time you pushed the 'send' button and the number in the box you entered actually showed up as a new number - it's the time it takes for the button to send the request and the time the browser takes to process the source code into a webpage for display - even if the round trip between the client and the process could be refined to 'zero', the time it takes for the browser to read the source code and interpret that code into the webpage display you see, including the new information you pressed the button for.) that drives you mad and makes it impossible for the internet to act as a computer.
So, Microsoft and others came up with something called XMLrequest which allowed the guy or gal (you) to push the button (which sends a request for data to be displayed like the previous example button did, but, this time with only the text that the button asked for - not the entire webpage).
So the server sends back this one piece of data and it goes directly to the item on the page (text box, image anchor, Flash(tm of Adobe) - anything on the web page you could tag as an item for showing data in context as information).
The web page sits there and does nothing because it never received any source code to execute (the web browser is a little software computer built on top of a hardware computer like your desktop or cell phone etc. - where the hardware is 'real' the software computer is 'virtual' [exists only as data] and thus is called a 'virtual machine' or VM).
But the little textbox next to the button you pushed just changed.
It will change as fast as it takes for the round trip from the client agent (the XMLrequest) to the server and back. Thus, the interaction has less latency (see there, now you're talking like a communications guru) and a more realtime 'look and feel'. Plus, this frees up the connection between your webpage and server by not having to send the webpage chunks again.
So, something like XMLhttp (which later morphed into 'XMLhttpRequest') by Microsoft is good to have as you can see.
It updates the information on a webpage with less latency (faster).
Good all around and nice to have. Essential to web application building.
Now, I want you to look at the eventual 'obvious' destination such an effort will take you. Like I said, you don't have to understand it, as long as you read it. The brain has a marvelous capability of allowing information to seep past the shallow associations we have in our brain's model of the day. In a few days it gets to becoming more clear and you have no idea where that information came from.
One of the Biblical guys said no man may receive (get to know) anything except it be from God ("the 'force'" imprints us with a pattern of logic and we think the thoughts) thus invention is a divine thing and most likely protected by the divinity doing the invention (programming).
(reference: DHTML, XML, XMLrequestHttp)
Glossary:
agent (a consumer of services that does other things)
United States Patent 7,076,521
Davison July 11, 2006
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Web-based collaborative data collection system
Abstract
The present invention is directed to a system for gathering data from a web-based server, transmitting the data to a web-based client, and storing the data on the web-based client. The web-based server translates data from a data supplier's proprietary data model into a data consumer's proprietary data model using a data mapping function. The web-based server also converts data from a structured data format to a markup language format. The web-based client periodically polls one or more data servers for data. The web-based client receives data in a markup language format and translates it into a structured data format, then stores it in a database. The web-based client and the web-based server can collaborate with each other to streamline the data conversion and translation process.
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Inventors: Davison; Jeff (Rockledge, FL)
Assignee: Vertical Computer Systems, Inc. (Los Angeles, CA)
Appl. No.: 09/882,494
Filed: June 15, 2001
Posted by Portuno Diamo
at 1:12 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 18 July 2007 1:15 PM EDT
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