Author Archive

• Ross Cooney
  This was a quick presentation covering where databases come from? Why are new databases needed and what is the theory behind them?
  You can download the presentation (A brief history of databases) here.

• David Lavery
  Dave started with a quick run down of the various databases that he has used over the years and then gave an excellent introduction to SimpleDB from Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine.
  
  You can download the presentation (An introduction to SimpleDB and Google App Engine) here.

• David Livingston
  David told us about RAQUEL, a new database system that he is helping to develop with a team at Northumbria University. RAQUEL is being developed as an open source project and you can get involved in it’s development by registering at the SourceForge RAQUEL website.
  
  You can download the presentation (An introduction to RAQUEL) here.

This event was sponsored by Codeworks Connect and The eCommerce Experiment. SuperMondays are very grateful to their platinum sponsors, Northern Film and Media and Sunderland Software City.

You can read some excellent blog posts about this event here:

• The Pickards Blog: SuperMondays: Databases
• Daniel Swan: SuperMondays – the oxymoron of face to face geek social networking
• Stephen Woods: First time at SuperMondays

Last night we had a sell out event at the Side Theatre. This is an excellent venue and judging my the feedback we will be back there soon.

David Coxon started off proceedings and gave an excellent presentation of how he setup the online store for The Baltic. Rather than choosing an off-the-shelf ecommerce application, David and his team decided to develop the shop from scratch. This was a risky decision but one that paid off in the end because after many long nights work the site was released on time and significantly under budget. You can download Davids presentation here and watch the video here:

Paul Callaghan then gave a detailed introduction to version control and why saving your data in bomb proof bunker is rather useless if your disk fails. Paul went on to introuduce us to Git, a free and open source version control system. Traditional revision control systems use a centralized model, where all the revision control functions are performed on a shared server where every Git clone is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server. Through a practical demonstration Paul showed us that branching and merging tasks are fast and easy to do. You can download his presentation here.

Finally we heard from Alex Kavanagh. Alex gave us an introduction to Subversion (SVN), another open source version control system. Subversion differs from git because it is a centralised repository, this means that all changes are checked into a central repository and users must communicate over the network with the central repository to obtain history about a file. You can see Alex’s presentation here:

I want to thank Alex and Hannah from Sailor Girl for finding and organising the venue for us.

Alastair Mc Donald introduced us to the world of geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing), a treasure hunting game which is played by thousands of players around the world. The game is an intriguing mix of treasure hunting, navigation, and outdoor hiking/walking. Players (geocachers) place caches in hidden locations around the world and log them on a geocaching website. Anybody with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache.

A typical cache comes in the shape of a tupperware box that contains a pen and paper. Once located the player can open the cache and sign the register. There are many types of cache and these are listed on the geocaching.com website.

Players are encouraged to find local caches and place a few themselves. Alistair has been playing for a few years and now has 14 caches located around the country.

Gavin Elliot and Justin Turner from the Ecommerce Experiment told us about how they plan to revolutionise the ecommerce market.

The Ecommerce Experiment was setup in early June by the Carrot Media team. Over the next three years the team will setup and run an online shop. During this process they will blog about all of their experiences. The team plan to discuss each step in detail including:

1. How to setup a bank account
2. How to source and buy stock
3. What development platform to use
4. What marketing tools work

You can follow the team on their blog and twitter.

Mike Parker from OrangeBus told us about how he uses Drupal to ‘Work less, Surf more’, a story which told us how he uses Drupal for rapid development.

Drupal is an open source development environment (released under the GPL) used by tens of thousands of people to power scores of different web sites, including Nike, Sony, Yahoo Developer Network and Beyonce (if it’s good enough for Beyonce it’s good enough for me). Drupal makes web development easy by combining an excellent PHP, mysql and user interface in a powerful environment that allows for third party modules and plugins.

Mike used an example of a website that he developed in 45 minutes to demonstrate how easy it is to develop using Drupal and the CCK, Panels, Five Star and Views modules. This was Mikes second presentation to SuperMondays.

Our final presentation of the night was from Ryan Dewhurst who introduced his  ’Damn Vulnerable Web App’.  DVWA is a PHP/MySQL web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goals are to be light weight, easy to use and full of vulnerabilities to exploit. Used to learn or teach the art of web application security.

Ryan first released DVWA in December 2008 and since then it has gained quite a following. It has been developed for the use of information security professionals and students to test out their skillz and/or toolz in a legal environment.

The newest version of DVWA is 1.0.4 and was released at SuperMondays under the GPL.

The group want to thank our four speakers for their time and commitment….and Northern Film and Media for their sponsorship!