Franz Tech Corner News: Free Web Seminar: Web 3.0 Database Technology

The Franz Tech Corner, January 25, 2007

In this issue:

1. Free Web Seminar: Understanding Web 3.0 Database Technology
2. Earthquake data via the USGS website
3. Support for any newline format in text input
5. RPC update provides better interface for killing the client Lisp
5. Training Schedule

Note: We've streamlined the navigation on our web site a bit. If you
think something is missing or misplaced, please let me know.

1. Free Web Seminar: Understanding Web 3.0 Database Technology

Tuesday, February 20, 10:00 - 11:30 am Pacific.

The Web is entering a new phase of technological evolution. Attend our
free seminar to learn more about the database technologies underlying
the future of the Internet.

Space is limited, so please R.S.V.P. to info@franz.com as soon as
possible. For more details:
http://franz.com/services/conferences_seminars/semantic_technologies.lhtml

2. Earthquake data via the USGS website

The earthquake data example uses AllegroServe to access earthquake
data from the United States Geological Survey, location data from
Google Maps and a zip code directory to list recent earthquakes near
any specified location in the USA. The code for the example is
relatively short. The techniques could be adapted by any application
wishing to use or display publicly available data. And running it,
you can find out about recent earthquakes near you! We are in
California, so these things matter to us.

A discussion of the example and instructions for downloading are here:
http://franz.com/support/tech_corner/usgs-011207.lhtml

3. Support for any newline format in text input

Exchanging text between computer systems is easy thanks to character
encoding standards such as ASCII, Unicode, and other widely used
standards. The ease of text exchange, though, is marred by different
computer systems using different line break conventions: UNIX uses an
ASCII linefeed, DOS uses an ASCII carriage-return followed by a
linefeed, and Macintosh systems traditionally use only the ASCII
carriage-return. This problem is an issue for Common Lisp since the
ANSI Common Lisp specification states that the single Lisp #\Newline
character is to indicate the end of a line of text. Thus, Lisp reading
and writing of text requires understanding how line endings are
handled on the native platform so that they can be properly converted
to #\Newline. Allegro CL allows the end-of-line convention to be set
for a stream, with the function eol-convention. A new value, :anynl,
is now accepted for input streams. It causes any valid end-of-line
convention to be correctly interpreted and avoids the problems
associated with reading files with unexpected end-of-line markers.

See here for more details:
http://franz.com/support/tech_corner/anynewline-011507.lhtml

4. RPC update provides better interface for killing the client Lisp

A new Allegro RPC (Remote Procedure Call) update was released in
mid-January, 2007. Along with various minor code changes and some
significant documentation revisions, the update added a new kill
keyword argument to client-exit. This argument provides more options
for killing the client Lisp process on remote hosts, invoking
Operating System commands when necessary.

Allegro RPC is described in rpc.htm:
http://franz.com/support/documentation/10.1/doc/rpc.htm

This Tech Corner article (from 2002) showed how to Use Allegro CL RPC
to gain remote access to an application:
http://franz.com/support/tech_corner/archive.lhtml#rpc-example

5. Training Schedule

Allegro CL Certification Program - Basic and Intermediate courses
available. Next 3-day sessions:

- Basic, March 7, 14 and 21
- Intermediate, February 7, 14 and 21

Ask us about previously recorded programs that are available if you
are unable to attend the live course.

http://franz.com/services/classes

Make the most of your Allegro CL application by utilizing our
consulting services,

http://franz.com/services/consulting/

Lisp Jobs - http://lispjobs.wordpress.com/

For more information about other Franz products and services, please
contact your product application manager or email sales@franz.com.