Rennovation Software

How to Connect to SQL Server from Visual FoxPro

2007-02-27T22:56:00.000-08:00

There are two functions that can be used to establish a connection with the a remote SQL Server from Visual FoxPro:

* SQLConnect()
* SQLStringConnect()
The SQLConnect() Function

There are two ways to use the SQLConnect() function to connect to a remote data source, such as SQL Server. The first requires that you supply the name of a data source as defined in the ODBC Data Source Administrator applet of the Control Panel.

The following example creates a connection to a remote server using the ODBCNorthwind DSN:

LOCAL hConn
hConn = SQLConnect("ODBCNorthwind", "sa", "")

The second way to use SQLConnect() is to supply the name of a Visual FoxPro connection that was created using the create connection command. The CREATE CONNECTION command stores the metadata that Visual FoxPro needs to connect to a remote data source.

The following example creates a Visual FoxPro connection named Northwind and then connects to the database described by the connection:

LOCAL hConn
CREATE DATABASE cstemp
CREATE CONNECTION Northwind DATASOURCE "ODBCNorthwind" USERID "sa" PASSWORD ""
hConn = SQLConnect("Northwind")

SQLStringConnect() Function

The other function that can be used to establish a connection to a remote data source, such as SQL Server, is SQLStringConnect(). Unlike SQLConnect(), SQLStringConnect() requires a single parameter, a string of semicolon-delimited options that describes the remote data source and optional connections settings.

The valid options are determined by the requirements of the ODBC driver. Specific requirements for each ODBC driver can be found in that ODBC driver's documentation.

The following table lists some commonly used connection string options for SQL Server:

DSN - References an ODBC DSN.
Driver - Specifies the name of the ODBC driver to use.
Server - Specifies the name of the SQL Server to connect to.
UID - Specifies the login ID or username.
PWD - Specifies the password for the given login ID or username.
Database - Specifies the initial database to connect to.
APP - Specifies the name of the application making the connection.
WSID - The name of the workstation making the connection.
Trusted_Connection - Specifies whether the login is being validated by the Windows NT Domain.

Not all of the options listed in the above table have to be used for each connection.

For instance, if you specify the Trusted_Connection option and connect to SQL Server using NT Authentication, there is no reason to use the UID and PWD options since SQL Server would invariably ignore them. The following code demonstrates some examples of using SQLStringConnect().

Note: You can use the name of your server instead of the string.

SQL Server 2000 code example:

LOCAL hConn
hConn=SQLStringConnect("Driver=SQLServer;Server=;UID=sa;PWD=;Database=Northwind");
hConn=SQLStringConnect("DSN=ODBCNorthwind;UID=sa;PWD=;Database=Northwind")
hConn=SQLStringConnect("DSN=ODBCNorthwind;Database=Northwind;Trusted_Connection=Yes")

Handling Connection Errors

Both the SQLConnect() and SQLStringConnect() functions return a connection handle. If the connection is established successfully, the handle will be a positive integer. If Visual FoxPro failed to make the connection, the handle will contain a negative integer. A simple call to the AERROR() function can be used to retrieve the error number and message. The following example traps for a failed connection and displays the error number and message using the Visual FoxPro MESSAGEBOX() function.

Visual FoxPro returns error 1526 for all errors against a remote data source. The fifth element of the array returned by AERROR() contains the remote data source-specific error.

#define MB_OKBUTTON 0
#define MB_STOPSIGNICON 16
LOCAL hConn
hConn = SQLConnect("ODBCNorthwind", "falseuser", "")
IF (hConn < 0)
LOCAL ARRAY laError[1]
AERROR(laError)
MESSAGEBOX(laError[2],MB_OKBUTTON + MB_STOPSIGNICON, "Error " + TRANSFORM(laError[5]))
ENDIF

Disconnecting From SQL Server

It is very important that a connection be released when it is no longer needed by the application because connections consume valuable resources on the server, and the number of connections may be limited by licensing constraints.

You break the connection to the remote data source using the SQLDisconnect() function. SQLDisconnect() takes one parameter, the connection handle created by a call to either SQLConnect() or SQLStringConnect(). SQLDisconnect() returns a 1 if the connection was correctly terminated and a negative value if an error occurred.

The following example establishes a connection to SQL Server, and then drops the connection:

LOCAL hConn,lnResult
hConn = SQLConnect("ODBCNorthwind", "sa", "")
IF (hConn > 0)
MESSAGEBOX("Connection has done")
lnResult = SQLDisconnect(hConn)
IF lnResult < 0
MESSAGEBOX("Disconnect failed")
ENDIF && lnResult < 0
ENDIF && hConn > 0

If the parameter supplied to SQLDisconnect() is not a valid connection handle, Visual FoxPro will return a run-time error (#1466). Currently there is no way to determine whether a connection handle is valid without attempting to use it. To disconnect all SQL pass through connections, you can pass a value of zero to SQLDisconnect().

Extreme Programming

2007-02-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

A discipline of software development that follows a specific structure that is designed to simplify and expedite the process of developing new software. Kent Beck developed Extreme Programming to be used with small teams of developers who need to develop software quickly in an environment of rapidly-changing requirements.

XP teams design software for specific functionalities without adding any functionalities that are not specifically requested that may slow down the process, keeping the development course simple through systematic and regular testing and design improvements.

Extreme Programming is based on 12 principles:
* The Planning Process -- The desired features of the software, which are communicated by the customer, are combined with cost estimates provided by the programmers to determine what the most important factors of the software are. This stage is sometimes called the Planning Game.
* Small Releases -- The software is developed in small stages that are updated frequently, typically every two weeks.
* Metaphor -- All members on an XP team use common names and descriptions to guide development and communicate on common terms.
* Simple Design -- The software should include only the code that is necessary to achieve the desired results communicated by the customer at each stage in the process. The emphasis is not on building for future versions of the product.
* Testing -- Testing is done consistently throughout the process. Programmers design the tests first and then write the software to fulfill the requirements of the test. The customer also provides acceptance tests at each stage to ensure the desired results are achieved.
* Refactoring -- XP programmers improve the design of the software through every stage of development instead of waiting until the end of the development and going back to correct flaws.
* Pair Programming -- All code is written by a pair of programmers working at the same machine.
* Collective Ownership -- Every line of code belongs to every programmer working on the project, so there are no issues of proprietary authorship to slow the project down. Code is changed when it needs to be changed without delay.
* Continuous Integration -- The XP team integrates and builds the software system multiple times per day to keep all the programmers at the same stage of the development process at once.
* 40-Hour Week -- The XP team does not work excessive overtime to ensure that the team remains well-rested, alert and effective.
* On-Site Customer -- The XP project is directed by the customer who is available all the time to answer questions, set priorities and determine requirements of the project.
* Coding Standard -- The programmers all write code in the same way. This allows them to work in pairs and to share ownership of the code.

How to change SQL Server Authentication Mode

2007-02-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

During installation, SQL Server Database Engine is set to either Windows Authentication mode or SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode. This topic describes how to change the security mode, after installation.

If Windows Authentication mode is selected during installation, the sa login is disabled. If you later change authentication mode to SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode, the sa login remains disabled. To enable the sa login, use the ALTER LOGIN command.

Security Note:

It is very important to choose a strong password for the sa login.

The sa login can only connect to the server using SQL Authentication.

To change security authentication mode:
* In SQL Server Management Studio Object Explorer, right-click your server, and then click Properties.
* On the Security page, under Server authentication, select the new server authentication mode, and then click OK.
* In the SQL Server Management Studio dialog box, click OK, to acknowledge the need to restart SQL Server.

To restart SQL Server from SQL Server Management Studio

In Object Explorer, right-click your server, and then click Restart. If running, SQL Server Agent must also be restarted.

To enable the sa login

Execute the following statements to enable the sa password and assign a password.

ALTER LOGIN sa ENABLE;
GO
ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD = '';
GO

Aggregate More Disk Space

2007-01-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

Hi guys... I have always been troubled by lack of storage space in my system and i had to rely on other drives (D,E,F.....). It was then i stumbled across this article on PCQUEST.

While working in WinXP/2000/2003, you may get the insufficient disk space message, meaning your c:\ dive is almost full. So you either have to delete some files or uninstall a few programs. But what if the c:\ partition has reached its limits?

There is a way out if you have free space in any other partition. Just create any empty folder there, follow the instructions below. This empty folder will appear as a part of your c:\ partition and you can use it to install new programs or simply store your data.

1. Create an empty folder in any NTFS partition that has ample space. It could be on the same drive or on a seperate physical drive.
2. Run diskmgmt.msc from Start Menu. Right click on the drive you want to expand. Select [Change Drive Letter or Partition] and click on Add.
3. From the [Add Drive Letter Path] window, select [Mount the following empty NTFS folder] and give the path for the empty NTFS folder.
4. The empty folder is converted into a [drive] and becomes a copy of the drive you expanded.

Visual FoxPro 9.0: Still Here, Still Relevant

2006-11-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

Even though FoxPro has long been overshadowed by more glamorous products, it's still one of the best tools on the market for getting things done. With new enhancements coming in version 9.0, it's not likely to go the way of the dodo anytime soon.

The FoxPro team at Microsoft is readying a new version for release at the end of 2004. This may come as a surprise to some; it's not uncommon to hear the uninformed say, "FoxPro? Is that still around?" But within the FoxPro community, there is a lot of excitement surrounding this next release. Performance enhancements will include a faster local data engine, support for more data types, greater ANSI compliance in its SQL implementation, an extensively enhanced report writer, and a number of smaller productivity and functionality enhancements.

Today, applications are still being written and deployed in Visual FoxPro, but there has been a marked decline in further adoption and deployment among U.S. companies. This is due primarily to the fact that Microsoft has marginalized the product in comparison with its flagship .NET languages, such as C# and VB.NET. This lack of marketing support is a hot-button issue among the VFP community.

While it may be true that managed code and strict compilers can result in "safer," less buggy, and more durable code, a single FoxPro developer can write a full-blown desktop or Web application in a comparatively short amount of time. The effort required to deal with complexity is left primarily to implementing application and business logic, not trying to understand a massive framework or wrestle with data binding.

So why should you care about a product that receives only the occasional nod from its maker? Because, Visual FoxPro is still here and it is still relevant. It serves a need that is underserved by any other single product in its category. Further, because of its ability to run on cheaper, older hardware, run legacy code, and still do everything a modern programming language is expected to do, it will remain the product of choice for renegade workgroups, small resource-constrained offices, independent software developers, and many governments and government-run agencies.

Everything you need to write, deploy, and maintain n-tier, high-availability, desktop, Internet, COM and Web services development is in the box or available from a third-party vendor.
A Strong Ancestry
To understand the staying power of FoxPro, it helps to understand its lineage. In the mid 80s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), like most government agencies, was provided with micro and personal computers. These stand-alone machines let engineers crunch large sets of data without jockeying for time on the mainframe. Spreadsheets and stat packages were often used, but were cumbersome and could easily result in data loss.

A database was a logical solution for dealing with these large amounts of data, so Wayne Ratliff wrote a program with its own database and added set of commands that could be executed on that data. "Vulcan" had an interactive dot prompt that allowed engineers to use a short set of commands to work through their data as physical data sets using phrases that were easy to remember. These simple English-like commands could be combined together into programs that could be executed from DOS. These programs became applications—and a new kind of application developer was born, the bandit, renegade, ad-hoc developer. The program eventually became Ashton-Tate's dBase.

"dBASE was different from programs such as BASIC, C, FORTRAN, and COBOL in that a lot of the dirty work had already been done. The data manipulation is done by dBASE instead of by the user, so the user can concentrate on what he is doing, rather than having to mess with the dirty details of opening, reading, and closing files, and managing space allocation." —Wayne Ratliff

Within a few years of its release, a number of dBase clones hit the market. FoxBase made its reputation by being significantly faster and more robust than the original. In addition, the Fox team was agile and more responsive to the user community. Through regular patching, timely support via CompuServe and significant releases, it stayed close to its roots while innovating faster by adding productivity tools in direct response to requests from users.

When FoxPro was released, it provided DOS programmers with a windowing interface. The Fox team had already provided cross platform compilers that allowed a developer to deploy in Unix or DOS, and over subsequent releases Windows and the Mac. Next came FoxPro2, which brought "Rushmore" (FoxPro's famous data performance enhancements), as well as in-line SQL commands and graphical screen and report writers.

Visual FoxPro
Visual FoxPro, (now owned by Microsoft) brought OOP, a fully relational data store, and remote data access. So by 1995, FoxPro developers were natively using SQL, doing OOP, and writing n-tier, cross platform applications—and all the while running legacy code written back in dBase II.

For FoxPro developers, Fox has simply been a safe application development path; your investment in the technology was not compromised by innovations made by the vendor. Unfortunately, the same can no longer be said with regard to marketing or other products made by the same vendor. This has lead to today's misconceptions about FoxPro and its place in the developer's world.

VFP will not become a .NET language. This was considered heavily during the VFP7 timeframe, but the changes would have resulted in a language that, at best, could not maintain its backward-compatibility and at worse, lose its powerful data manipulation capabilities. And the areas that were redundant between the .NET framework and VFP's extensive language and classes would have created more confusion and very well may have lead to an untimely death for the product.

Because it will never run managed code, Visual FoxPro is no longer strategic to Microsoft, and understandably so. However, it is a mature development platform. Everything you need to write, deploy, and maintain n-tier, high-availability, desktop, Internet, COM and Web services development is in the box or available from a third-party vendor. It contains a robust object-oriented language and a fully relational, notably fast, database that supports tables under two gigs or one billion records, and a stand-alone OLEDB data provider. Even the IDE, with fully extensible design surfaces, has significant portions of its tools and wizards built in its own language (with released source). There is also strong compatibility with SQL Server, excellent COM interop—including Office automation, powerful XML processing and functionality, and it's still backward-compatible with code written 20 years ago!

So Where Does VFP Fit in Today?
It's Still the Choice of Professionals Who Need to Get the Job Done
Especially if that person's primary job isn't writing software.

In the words of Lt. John Harvey:

"My day job is that of a lieutenant for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office in Memphis, TN where I am the bureau commander for Information Systems. I have developed systems that are currently in use by our agency, the Memphis Police, all local law enforcement agencies, and most federal agencies such as the FBI, ATF, Marshals, and the Secret Service. My latest "big project" is a laptop-based system for our Fugitive Bureau where the officers access data via wireless modems and WiFi. They are able to pull up mugshots, arrest reports, etc, as well as print the arrest tickets from the field. The middleware is Webconnection (a VFP Web Product) and we pull data from VFP, SQL Server, and the Tandem Mainframe."

I asked him if he thought he could have done what he's done in .NET. His response was "I have three .NET developers here that I run rings around."

This is not because the applications are better suited to run in Fox than in .NET. It's because a sheriff's officer was able to start using a tool interactively, automate his work, migrate his programs into an application, expand the application to integrate with other systems, and ultimately create a suite of invaluable tools.

Why should you care about Visual FoxPro? Because it's everywhere, it's powerful, it's quick to learn, it's cheap, and the guy who wants your job knows what it can do...
It's Still the Choice of Developers with a Significant Investment in Existing Code
Chris Jeffries is a vice president of development at Human Resources MicroSystems. Their suite of HR applications rivals the power and functionality of SAP and PeopleSoft systems. The core of the application was written in Visual FoxPro and .NET and they have products that target small to medium sized organizations, as well as large enterprises.

Chris states:

"... there are, by my guess, billions of data records stored in FoxPro worldwide and the FoxPro DML is the best way to manage those records. The language is the most approachable language in the programming world and is easily understood by those with minimal skill."

On migrating to .NET:

"We are spending more time developing new solutions in .NET than we are in VFP, but our core business is still in VFP. The desktop application will most likely remain in VFP because it's just too big to re-write in .NET due to resource constrictions. .NET forms, reports, and other aspects of the VFP desktop app would have to be re-written from scratch to provide the same kind of end-user flexibility."

It's Still the Choice of Managers with Constrained Resources
Visual FoxPro can run on hardware that is over eight years old, and it's still fairly snappy. This may seem like a ridiculous fact, but if you have ever worked in Third World markets, or with military or government agencies, you know that being able to run on older hardware is a non-negotiable requirement. The ability to distribute and scale applications written in FoxPro without worrying about licensing is often a big part of the buying decision as well.

It's in these same environments that IT resources are at a premium, and rarely available for maintenance of old systems. But because of FoxPro's high discoverability, it is fairly easy for someone to figure out what it takes to maintain or even extend the application.

Garrett Fitzgerald, a VFP MVP says it this way:

"FoxPro has long been the bread and butter for companies that don't want to (or can't) spend the money to chase the latest technology. Mom and Pop stores don't tend to need a .NET/SQL Server solution to run their businesses, and can't justify spending the money to do it correctly. FoxPro is peppy, even on lesser hardware—compare the requirements for both. However, when properly written, Fox apps can (and have) handled data sets up into the 100s of gigs."

On why he continues to choose VFP: "Because I can be highly productive and deliver excellent value to my customers using VFP. "

It's the Swiss Army Knife of Data-centric Applications
I find that having delivered applications in VFP, I have a grasp of the entire software development process. I understand issues from design to development to maintenance and migration. I understand the ins and outs of database design, object-oriented design, user interface design, business object design, data access layers, COM and Web services, and enterprise design patterns.

Why should you care about Visual FoxPro? Because it's everywhere, it's powerful, it's quick to learn, it's cheap, and the guy who wants your job knows what it can do—and because certain kinds of programming jobs lend themselves to quick and dirty ad-hoc data manipulation.

In other words, I like being a .NET developer who understands this tool, rather than one who doesn't. Even if I were to never write another FoxPro app again, it will always be installed on my machine.

Courtesy : http://www.devx.com (by David T. Anderson)

Dangerous (Do not drink Coka-Cola and eat MENTOS together)

2006-11-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

Last week a little boy died in Brazil after eating MENTOS and drinking COCA COLA together.

One year before the same accident happened with another boy in Brazil .

Please check the experiment that has been done by mixing Coca Cola with MENTOS........

Be careful with your Coke

Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment Video

Science with Diet Cola and Mentos

An Explosive Experiment

Anyone who doesn’t like science has probably never associated diet Coca Cola with Mentos. The best of science comes from the experiments in which we can have fun, at least for those of us with the heart of a child. This experiment is very much like the infamous volcano we all created for our schools science fair. Simple every day ingredients coming together to create one heck of a reaction, and one heck of a display.

When placing Mentos mint candies and the diet Coca Cola soft drink together they react making a foaming explosion. To try this experiment your self, buy a couple (2) packages or more (depending on how many times you want to try this, or how big you want the reaction) packages of Mentos. Mint flavor would be the suggested flavor. Also buy a carbonated soda (preferably diet Coca Cola) and you are on your way. Now find a safe place to try this experiment where you won’t have to worry about creating a mess. The neighbor’s backyard is probably not one of those places.

Open your soda of choice and place it in a place where it will stand upright. Place your mentos into the bottle and stand back. Moving is highly suggested. Especially if you use your entire two packages all at once. The bottles will react very quickly and very violently depending on your specific amount of candies used. Reactions from this experiment have been measured up to 10 feet high, and even higher! Still think science is boring?

What creates this strong reaction? It is not yet fully explained, although, as one may think, this should be simple science. Still, scientists such as Lee Marek argue that this is a physical, not chemical reaction that takes place. When water molecules attract to each other they create very strong bonds. In order to form bubbles, such as those created by carbon dioxide in carbonated soda, water molecules must push away from each other. This requires a lot of physical energy, creating that physical reaction, rather than the chemical reaction you would see in a color change or a temperature change.

On the coating of a Mentos candy you will find millions or more tiny little holes, which include niches (knee-chez) called nucleation sites. When you drop the Mentos into your soda this outer coating will break the surface tension and release thousands of tiny carbon dioxide bubbles as the soda eats through the candy. The buildup of pressure if you contain it inside the bottle for a period and then release it is huge. The pressure will create an incredible blast for you and your friends to enjoy… hopefully from a distance.

It has been found that diet sodas work much better with this experiment, than it’s usual counter part. Although scientifically speaking no one is sure why this is true (would you take Mentos and soda serious in a chemistry lab?), it is speculated that it could have something to do with the artificial sweetener, rather than the sugar filled regular soda. However, the most practical reason that we can give you is that diet soda is much less sticky and therefore, much easier to clean up.

Office & PC Cleanup

2006-11-03T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is the main reason for working this Saturday. :) I have about 6 months worth of junk that has travelled with me from place to place over the weeks, and every attempt to clean it in a short time period usually ends up in a bunch of stuff getting disposed of, a bunch of it getting sorted and filed, and a bunch sorted but not filed (which then winds up back in my way again), and boxes of stuff still not touched because I didn't finish cleaning it all.

And then, because internally, I'm pretty much a perfectionist, the new stuff winds up getting added to the pile, because the sorted/filed places it was all supposed to go never got finished/caught up, so it all gets added to the pile for the next time I get back to working on it.

So here's what my office looks like right now. My goal is by the end of this week to get this organized that I can actually use it as a workplace again.

Whether I get to it or not is still up in the air. Also on my plate today is an Antivirus move. They're the victim of an extremely slow Norton Antivirus that's reducing its speed , so it's either move or die. Personally, I don't want to see my PC die. :)

Felt like writing something that wasn’t my computer application essay.

There's lot more to do so .........

Bye for now.

Visit at Akshardham

2006-10-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

I had heard about Akshardham (Temple of Swaminarayan), situated at the banks of River Yamuna in Delhi, from my friends who had been there. I could not restrict myself from seeing it myself and so we finally planned to make a visit. I did not known much about Akshardham until that day.

It was a great experience being there. It was more than just a Temple. Believe me I am not a spiritual person. But you need not be spiritual to understand what Akshardham is trying to tell you. The Akshardham experience is an enlightening journey through India’s glorious art, values and contributions for the progress, happiness and harmony of mankind.

Swaminarayan Akshardham was built in 5 years by over 7000 artisans. One of the messages touched my thoughts at Akshardham was, "It took 7000 artisans over 5 years to complete the Akshardham. How many people do you think are required to shape your life. The answer is simple: One, and that is yourself". Doesn't that make sense to you all.

At Swaminarayan Akshardham you have the Hall of Fame, Giant Screen Film, The Boat Ride and the Musical Fountain. The Hall of Fame has Unique 3-D dioramas and walk-through dioramas. The Giant screen film features Swaminaran's childhood as a yogi, when he was known as Neelkanth.

The Boat ride is a journey through Vedic period of India, its Heritage, Takshashila, a journey through the labyrinth of ancient discoveries and inventions by great rishi-scientists of India.

The Musical fountain is worth watching.

Web 2.0 - Rocking !

2006-09-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Does "Web 2.0" mean anything? Till recently I thought it didn't, but the truth turns out to be more complicated. Originally, yes, it was meaningless. Now it seems to have acquired a meaning. And yet those who dislike the term are probably right, because if it means what I think it does, we don't need it.

I first heard the phrase "Web 2.0" in the name of the Web 2.0 conference in 2004. At the time it was supposed to mean using "the web as a platform," which I took to refer to web-based applications. [1]

So I was surprised at a conference this summer when Tim O'Reilly led a session intended to figure out a definition of "Web 2.0." Didn't it already mean using the web as a platform? And if it didn't already mean something, why did we need the phrase at all?

Origins

Tim says the phrase "Web 2.0" first arose in "a brainstorming session between O'Reilly and Medialive International." What is Medialive International? "Producers of technology tradeshows and conferences," according to their site. So presumably that's what this brainstorming session was about. O'Reilly wanted to organize a conference about the web, and they were wondering what to call it.

I don't think there was any deliberate plan to suggest there was a new version of the web. They just wanted to make the point that the web mattered again. It was a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming, and the "2.0" referred to whatever those might turn out to be.

And they were right. New things were coming. But the new version number led to some awkwardness in the short term. In the process of developing the pitch for the first conference, someone must have decided they'd better take a stab at explaining what that "2.0" referred to. Whatever it meant, "the web as a platform" was at least not too constricting.

The story about "Web 2.0" meaning the web as a platform didn't live much past the first conference. By the second conference, what "Web 2.0" seemed to mean was something about democracy. At least, it did when people wrote about it online. The conference itself didn't seem very grassroots. It cost $2800, so the only people who could afford to go were VCs and people from big companies.

And yet, oddly enough, Ryan Singel's article about the conference in Wired News spoke of "throngs of geeks." When a friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was news to him. He said he'd originally written something like "throngs of VCs and biz dev guys" but had later shortened it just to "throngs," and that this must have in turn been expanded by the editors into "throngs of geeks." After all, a Web 2.0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right?

Well, no. There were about 7. Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. I saw him walk by and said to one of the O'Reilly people "that guy looks just like Tim."

"Oh, that's Tim. He bought a suit."

I ran after him, and sure enough, it was. He explained that he'd just bought it in Thailand.

The 2005 Web 2.0 conference reminded me of Internet trade shows during the Bubble, full of prowling VCs looking for the next hot startup. There was that same odd atmosphere created by a large number of people determined not to miss out. Miss out on what? They didn't know. Whatever was going to happen-- whatever Web 2.0 turned out to be.

I wouldn't quite call it "Bubble 2.0" just because VCs are eager to invest again. The Internet is a genuinely big deal. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom. It's to be expected that once we started to pull out of the bust, there would be a lot of growth in this area, just as there was in the industries that spiked the sharpest before the Depression.

The reason this won't turn into a second Bubble is that the IPO market is gone. Venture investors are driven by exit strategies. The reason they were funding all those laughable startups during the late 90s was that they hoped to sell them to gullible retail investors; they hoped to be laughing all the way to the bank. Now that route is closed. Now the default exit strategy is to get bought, and acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. The closest you'll get to Bubble valuations is Rupert Murdoch paying $580 million for Myspace. That's only off by a factor of 10 or so.

1. Ajax

Does "Web 2.0" mean anything more than the name of a conference yet? I don't like to admit it, but it's starting to. When people say "Web 2.0" now, I have some idea what they mean. And the fact that I both despise the phrase and understand it is the surest proof that it has started to mean something.

One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what "Ajax" means is "Javascript now works." And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.

As you read this, a whole new generation of software is being written to take advantage of Ajax. There hasn't been such a wave of new applications since microcomputers first appeared. Even Microsoft sees it, but it's too late for them to do anything more than leak "internal" documents designed to give the impression they're on top of this new trend.

In fact the new generation of software is being written way too fast for Microsoft even to channel it, let alone write their own in house. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. And even that's going to be hard, because Google has as big a head start in buying microstartups as it did in search a few years ago. After all, Google Maps, the canonical Ajax application, was the result of a startup they bought.

So ironically the original description of the Web 2.0 conference turned out to be partially right: web-based applications are a big component of Web 2.0. But I'm convinced they got this right by accident. The Ajax boom didn't start till early 2005, when Google Maps appeared and the term "Ajax" was coined.

2. Democracy

The second big element of Web 2.0 is democracy. We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts. Wikipedia may be the most famous. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they miss the critical point: it's good enough. And it's free, which means people actually read it. On the web, articles you have to pay for might as well not exist. Even if you were willing to pay to read them yourself, you can't link to them. They're not part of the conversation.

Another place democracy seems to win is in deciding what counts as news. I never look at any news site now except Reddit. [2] I know if something major happens, or someone writes a particularly interesting article, it will show up there. Why bother checking the front page of any specific paper or magazine? Reddit's like an RSS feed for the whole web, with a filter for quality. Similar sites include Digg, a technology news site that's rapidly approaching Slashdot in popularity, and del.icio.us, the collaborative bookmarking network that set off the "tagging" movement. And whereas Wikipedia's main appeal is that it's good enough and free, these sites suggest that voters do a significantly better job than human editors.

The most dramatic example of Web 2.0 democracy is not in the selection of ideas, but their production. I've noticed for a while that the stuff I read on individual people's sites is as good as or better than the stuff I read in newspapers and magazines. And now I have independent evidence: the top links on Reddit are generally links to individual people's sites rather than to magazine articles or news stories.

My experience of writing for magazines suggests an explanation. Editors. They control the topics you can write about, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. The result is to damp extremes. Editing yields 95th percentile writing-- 95% of articles are improved by it, but 5% are dragged down. 5% of the time you get "throngs of geeks."

On the web, people can publish whatever they want. Nearly all of it falls short of the editor-damped writing in print publications. But the pool of writers is very, very large. If it's large enough, the lack of damping means the best writing online should surpass the best in print. [3] And now that the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff, the web wins net. Selection beats damping, for the same reason market economies beat centrally planned ones.

Even the startups are different this time around. They are to the startups of the Bubble what bloggers are to the print media. During the Bubble, a startup meant a company headed by an MBA that was blowing through several million dollars of VC money to "get big fast" in the most literal sense. Now it means a smaller, younger, more technical group that just decided to make something great. They'll decide later if they want to raise VC-scale funding, and if they take it, they'll take it on their terms.

3. Don't Maltreat Users

I think everyone would agree that democracy and Ajax are elements of "Web 2.0." I also see a third: not to maltreat users. During the Bubble a lot of popular sites were quite high-handed with users. And not just in obvious ways, like making them register, or subjecting them to annoying ads. The very design of the average site in the late 90s was an abuse. Many of the most popular sites were loaded with obtrusive branding that made them slow to load and sent the user the message: this is our site, not yours. (There's a physical analog in the Intel and Microsoft stickers that come on some laptops.)

I think the root of the problem was that sites felt they were giving something away for free, and till recently a company giving anything away for free could be pretty high-handed about it. Sometimes it reached the point of economic sadism: site owners assumed that the more pain they caused the user, the more benefit it must be to them. The most dramatic remnant of this model may be at salon.com, where you can read the beginning of a story, but to get the rest you have sit through a movie.

At Y Combinator we advise all the startups we fund never to lord it over users. Never make users register, unless you need to in order to store something for them. If you do make users register, never make them wait for a confirmation link in an email; in fact, don't even ask for their email address unless you need it for some reason. Don't ask them any unnecessary questions. Never send them email unless they explicitly ask for it. Never frame pages you link to, or open them in new windows. If you have a free version and a pay version, don't make the free version too restricted. And if you find yourself asking "should we allow users to do x?" just answer "yes" whenever you're unsure. Err on the side of generosity.

In How to Start a Startup I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. Another way to fly low is to give users more power. Let users do what they want. If you don't and a competitor does, you're in trouble.

iTunes is Web 2.0ish in this sense. Finally you can buy individual songs instead of having to buy whole albums. The recording industry hated the idea and resisted it as long as possible. But it was obvious what users wanted, so Apple flew under the labels. [4] Though really it might be better to describe iTunes as Web 1.5. Web 2.0 applied to music would probably mean individual bands giving away DRMless songs for free.

The ultimate way to be nice to users is to give them something for free that competitors charge for. During the 90s a lot of people probably thought we'd have some working system for micropayments by now. In fact things have gone in the other direction. The most successful sites are the ones that figure out new ways to give stuff away for free. Craigslist has largely destroyed the classified ad sites of the 90s, and OkCupid looks likely to do the same to the previous generation of dating sites.

Serving web pages is very, very cheap. If you can make even a fraction of a cent per page view, you can make a profit. And technology for targeting ads continues to improve. I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now eBay had been supplanted by an ad-supported freeBay (or, more likely, gBay).

Odd as it might sound, we tell startups that they should try to make as little money as possible. If you can figure out a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the better, if all fifty million go to you. Though indeed, making things cheaper often turns out to generate more money in the end, just as automating things often turns out to generate more jobs.

The ultimate target is Microsoft. What a bang that balloon is going to make when someone pops it by offering a free web-based alternative to MS Office. [5] Who will? Google? They seem to be taking their time. I suspect the pin will be wielded by a couple of 20 year old hackers who are too naive to be intimidated by the idea. (How hard can it be?)

The Common Thread

Ajax, democracy, and not dissing users. What do they all have in common? I didn't realize they had anything in common till recently, which is one of the reasons I disliked the term "Web 2.0" so much. It seemed that it was being used as a label for whatever happened to be new-- that it didn't predict anything.

But there is a common thread. Web 2.0 means using the web the way it's meant to be used. The "trends" we're seeing now are simply the inherent nature of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble.

I realized this when I read an as-yet unpublished interview with Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite. [6]

Excite really never got the business model right at all. We fell into the classic problem of how when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium-- which fails, and then the more appropriate models get figured out.

It may have seemed as if not much was happening during the years after the Bubble burst. But in retrospect, something was happening: the web was finding its natural angle of repose. The democracy component, for example-- that's not an innovation, in the sense of something someone made happen. That's what the web naturally tends to produce.

Ditto for the idea of delivering desktop-like applications over the web. That idea is almost as old as the web. But the first time around it was co-opted by Sun, and we got Java applets. Java has since been remade into a generic replacement for C++, but in 1996 the story about Java was that it represented a new model of software. Instead of desktop applications, you'd run Java "applets" delivered from a server.

This plan collapsed under its own weight. Microsoft helped kill it, but it would have died anyway. There was no uptake among hackers. When you find PR firms promoting something as the next development platform, you can be sure it's not. If it were, you wouldn't need PR firms to tell you, because hackers would already be writing stuff on top of it, the way sites like Busmonster used Google Maps as a platform before Google even meant it to be one.

The proof that Ajax is the next hot platform is that thousands of hackers have spontaneously started building things on top of it. Mikey likes it.

There's another thing all three components of Web 2.0 have in common. Here's a clue. Suppose you approached investors with the following idea for a Web 2.0 startup:

Sites like del.icio.us and flickr allow users to "tag" content with descriptive tokens. But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. Moreover, these links represent a social network connecting the individuals and organizations who created the pages, and by using graph theory we can compute from this network an estimate of the reputation of each member. We plan to mine the web for these implicit tags, and use them together with the reputation hierarchy they embody to enhance web searches.

How long do you think it would take them on average to realize that it was a description of Google?

Google was a pioneer in all three components of Web 2.0: their core business sounds crushingly hip when described in Web 2.0 terms, "Don't maltreat users" is a subset of "Don't be evil," and of course Google set off the whole Ajax boom with Google Maps.

Web 2.0 means using the web as it was meant to be used, and Google does. That's their secret. They're sailing with the wind, instead of sitting becalmed praying for a business model, like the print media, or trying to tack upwind by suing their customers, like Microsoft and the record labels. [7]

Google doesn't try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what's going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does. That's the way to approach technology-- and as business includes an ever larger technological component, the right way to do business.

The fact that Google is a "Web 2.0" company shows that, while meaningful, the term is also rather bogus. It's like the word "allopathic." It just means doing things right, and it's a bad sign when you have a special word for that.

Notes

[1] From the conference site, June 2004: "While the first wave of the Web was closely tied to the browser, the second wave extends applications across the web and enables a new generation of services and business opportunities." To the extent this means anything, it seems to be about web-based applications.

[2] Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator. But although I started using it out of loyalty to the home team, I've become a genuine addict. While we're at it, I'm also an investor in !MSFT, having sold all my shares earlier this year.

[3] I'm not against editing. I spend more time editing than writing, and I have a group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I write. What I dislike is editing done after the fact by someone else.

[4] Obvious is an understatement. Users had been climbing in through the window for years before Apple finally moved the door.

[5] Hint: the way to create a web-based alternative to Office may not be to write every component yourself, but to establish a protocol for web-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers. Or it may be to write it all yourself.

[6] The interview is from Jessica Livingston's upcoming Founders at Work.

[7] Microsoft didn't sue their customers directly, but they seem to have done all they could to help SCO sue them.

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(Courtesy: http://www.paulgraham.com)