The Hindu : Business : Monitoring open source projects

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 26, 2004

Business

Business

Monitoring open source projects

THIS WEEK NetSpeak features a notification service that tracks various open-source projects in real-time and provides the latest information on the current postings available at various open-source project repositories spread across the Net.

The concept of open-source is well entrenched in the netizens' psyche and it has become natural for them to think that if IT can solve a problem then there is an open-source solution for it. Apart from the fact that it makes good economic sense to employ an open source product, it provides several other advantages over a commercial product. One benefit of an open source product is that its quality improves over time.

Open-source programs are developed through collaborative means achieved by mobilising the services of dedicated developers on the Net. Whenever a demand for a new feature comes in from a user or a bug is reported, developers intervene and add new features or make the necessary corrections. This way, new ideas flow continuously, the software gets constantly updated and the user ultimately gets a vibrant, living product.

This brings us to another riddle. If you are using several open source programs and want to use the latest versions with lesser bugs and more features, you need to keep a constant vigil on each project. One way to accomplish this is to visit the web sites of these projects on a daily basis and keep abreast with the latest content. This is a laborious task. The open source notification service, CIA (http://cia.navi.cx/) helps you get around such difficulties.

CIA: Open source notification system

CIA, the open source project tracking service, is designed to track the various developments that occur on several open source projects in real-time. If a developer makes changes in any of the project files, it will immediately be captured by the tracking service and displayed on its site (http://cia.navi.cx/stats). The service enables anyone on the Net to know the current, `right-now' state of several open source projects. You can get the projects' statistics listed according to categories such as Project, Author and `Version Control Systems'.

Apart from listing the tracking information on its web page, the service provides RSS feeds.

The tracking data can also be viewed through IRC channels. From the `IRC Bots' page, you can view the details of IRC servers and channels that contain the tracking information. Select the one that contains information related to your favourite project and view the latest postings with the help of an IRC client.

Questionnaire Programming Language

Manually building a questionnaire is a mundane task and you can benefit by automating the process with the help of a few lines of code. The free software, Questionnaire Programming Language (QPL — http://www.gao.gov/qpl/), is created with this goal in mind. The QPL system enables you to "easily create web-based self-administered questionnaires".

After downloading/installing the program you will find a QPL help icon on your desktop, which can be used to invoke the QPL documentation. First, design the questionnaire by writing the questions in the QPL code. You need not be a programmer to write the questions in this language. For each question, you have to define details such as name of the question, question type, text of the answers and so on. By just reading the documentation once, you will get a reasonably good grip on how to do this.

After designing the questions, keep it on a file (say qtn.pgm) and store it on to a separate directory. Extract the components of the compressed archive, `qpl-public-master-files.zip', on to this directory. Now, send the questionnaire file through the compile program `qpl-compile' and generate the compiled file `qtn.gpl' (for this, at the command prompt, type the command `qpl-compile qtn.pgm').

If the program file gets compiled properly, run the program, `qpl_convert,' with the compiled output (at the command prompt, type the command `qpl-convert qtn.qpl /htm'. This process will generate a set of `html' files that contain the necessary resources for displaying the questionnaire through a browser. You can view the questionnaire with a browser and get it printed out if required.

You may also use the `qpl-convert' program to generate a set of PHP files and an SQL file with the SQL commands to generate databases and tables. The PHP programs contain the required scripts to administer the survey on-line. This author has, however, not yet tested this feature.

Directory of open access journals: A journal that can be accessed without any restrictions for free is called an open access journal (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml). Though several such journals encompassing a wide range of subjects are available on the Net, it may not always be possible to locate the ones that suit your requirements. In this regard, have a look at the service, DOAJ (http://www.doaj.org/), the directory of open access journals that currently hosts the details of around 839 journals.

World telephone guide

Would you like to know the details of the telephone numbering systems in different countries? If so, check out the site `World Telephone Numbering Guide' (http://www.wtng.info/), where you can find various telephone related details such as each country's number format, city STD codes and so on.

Update: Download Manager

Download managers help us download Net resources easily and as regular readers of this column would know, NetSpeak has featured many of them. LeechGet 2004 is another download manager worth installing.

Apart from providing the usual download manager features such as resume downloads, multi-threaded downloading and the like, Leech, through its `Web Parser' tool, allows you to download specified resources from a web site. For details: http://www.leechget.net/en/

J. Murali
Email the author at: murali27@satyam.net.in

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Monitoring open source projects