`Monkey`

CQL, the Cassandra Query Language

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:14:00 +0000

cqlsh> CREATE KEYSPACE test with strategy_class = 'SimpleStrategy' and strategy_options:replication_factor=1; cqlsh> USE test;

cqlsh> CREATE COLUMNFAMILY users (
   ...     key varchar PRIMARY KEY,
   ...     full_name varchar,
   ...     birth_date int,
   ...     state varchar
   ... );

cqlsh> CREATE INDEX ON users (birth_date);
cqlsh> CREATE INDEX ON users (state);

cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('bsanderson', 'Brandon Sanderson', 1975, 'UT');
cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('prothfuss', 'Patrick Rothfuss', 1973, 'WI');
cqlsh> INSERT INTO users (key, full_name, birth_date, state) VALUES ('htayler', 'Howard Tayler', 1968, 'UT');

cqlsh> SELECT key, state FROM users;
        key | state |
bsanderson |    UT |
  prothfuss |    WI |
    htayler |    UT |

cqlsh> SELECT * FROM users WHERE state='UT' AND birth_date > 1970;         KEY | birth_date |         full_name | state | bsanderson |       1975 | Brandon Sanderson |    UT |

via datastax.com

HBase has PigLatin, now Cassandra has CQL. It's a natural evolve step for distributed databases that depend of Map-Reduce to query and processing data.

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Steve Blank on Startups & The New Bubble

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sat, 28 May 2011 00:10:00 +0000

Steve Blank Gigaom Interview

via steveblank.com

Key points: Entrepreneurs are artists. New bubble is good. Today, total available market is exponential. VC $$$ should be used for scaling and visibility. Entrepreneurs should study psychology.

Find out more by watching the whole video. It's great.

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RoR Win: “Getting Things Done” with MongoDB

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:11:00 +0000

We high five each other and claim “Rails Win!” when someone finds a gem that solves a really big problem in a few lines of code. In this post I’ll list a few interesting addons to the RoR Mongoid ORM that are slowly adding up to a feature-rich ecosystem of plug-and-play modules that work with Mongoid. This list should convince you that you should at least try MongoDB. You can get a ton of functionality “for free”.

via code.dblock.org

Vinova is proud to be author of voteable_mongo gem and contributor of mongoid-slug gem.

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Running a Flat Company | Jason Fried of 37signals

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sun, 22 May 2011 02:28:00 +0000

At 37signals, however, we have a different position on ambition. We're not big fans of what I consider "vertical" ambition—that is, the usual career-path trajectory, in which a newbie moves up the ladder from associate to manager to vice president over a number of years of service. On the other hand, we revere "horizontal" ambition—in which employees who love what they do are encouraged to dig deeper, expand their knowledge, and become better at it. We always try to hire people who yearn to be master craftspeople, that is, designers who want to be great designers, not managers of designers; developers who want to master the art of programming, not management.

via inc.com

At Vinova, we are doing the same by building a skillful, passionate and inter-dependent team. Team members wear many hats and work in harmony toward a common goal. Each member should be the boss of his own.

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You Need to Win the Battle for Share of Mind (by solving a real problem)

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sat, 21 May 2011 23:56:00 +0000

The challenge that many startups face today is: Are you really providing enough value? Will you get the TechCrunch bump, the tier-1 VC anointment, followed by great PR firm support and then the NY Times or WSJ story that follows? Will that be enough or will high churn rates creep in, new toys be introduced into the market, new time sucks pulling user attention away? This year’s Tamagotchi?

If you’re building a startup today I would encourage you to think harder about how you’re going to win the battle for share of mind. That’s much tougher than getting people to play with your hot product for 6 months. To do so you must truly provide value that changes the way that end-consumers do something in their lives that will persist.

via bothsidesofthetable.com

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Silicon Valley Guru Steve Blank Welcomes The New Bubble And Says Microsoft Is Doomed

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sat, 21 May 2011 05:35:00 +0000

The LinkedIn IPO "absolutely" marks the beginning of a bubble -- and he thinks it's going to be great. He likens it to the Netscape IPO in August 1995 that kicked off four years of boom times, but notes that this time VCs actually know how to build real companies with real revenue and profit.

Crazy investors -- not geeks -- are what makes Silicon Valley unique. Without the "crazy" financiers willing to take big risks in hopes of chasing "obscene" returns, the valley would just be "a bunch of smart scientists and entrepreneurs sitting in their labs and their garages."

Microsoft will start to fail within six quarters. Blank put a timeline on Microsoft suffering the kind of huge loss that drove IBM to restructure itself back in 1993: six quarters from now. He thinks Steve Ballmer is a "miserable failure" and that the board should be blamed for not replacing him. He also suggests that buying Nokia and installing Stephen Elop as CEO might be a solution.

But Larry Page is doing the right thing at Google. By letting the geeks run the show, Page is following in the footsteps of one of the earliest Silicon Valley pioneers: Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1950s.

via businessinsider.com

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Ethics, customers, profit. Don't forget that priority order.

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:27:00 +0000

The most common mistake is to put profits first. That opens the door for bad things to happen. Numbers become all-important, and almost any behavior is justified in the name of profit. Cheating sets in.

Instead, a company's priority should be to protect and enhance its reputation through ethical behavior. Within the confines of that behavior, its next most important goal should be to attract and keep customers. Third is figuring out how to make money.

via blogs.hbr.org

It reminds me of http://www.itsnotwhatyousell.com/pdf/ch1-spence.pdf

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Context not content is king

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:35:00 +0000

Discovering context is the end game of curation

The need to filter social networks to create value is a natural reaction to the raw value and size of the networks themselves.

via arnoldwaldstein.com

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Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:26:00 +0000

I do think the rise of alternative notification channels; sms, mobile push notifications, direct messages on twitter, facebook messaging, etc are going to move some of this kind of thing off of email over time. But today, if you want to drive retention and repeat usage, there isn't a better way to do it than email.

via avc.com

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Performance Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sun, 08 May 2011 17:30:00 +0000

In last few months, we has been developing and iPhone / iPad apps that pull JSON data from an web API frequently. We used Ruby on Rails to do the first version for both website and API service. After trying the first version, customers complained about loading speed. They said that data loading on the mobile app was SLOW. There are two reasons that make Rails based API calls slow:

Rails is heavy and blocking (after an API call we do some logging and system shouldn't have wait for logging to return data to clients)
Need to join four SQL tables to query data, combine data then convert to JSON

Let optimize them!

Solutions for (1) are:

Rack Apps + Job Queues (Delayed Jobs, Resque ...)
Non blocking server (Node.js, Goliath ...) to fire an action to log info to database, forget it and return JSON to clients

Non blocking was chosen because it's fast, it handles more requests and help to avoid managing additional job queues.

For (2), de-normalize and pre-calculate JSON is the first step. But there is a table that cannot be de-normalized using SQL. It's listings table that state which item will be showed on which month and in which category. Let say item I will be showed in category C in month M1 and M2 then two rows (I, C, M1) and (I, C, M2) must exist in listings table. After de-normalization and JSON pre-calculation, only it need to join only two tables to get items give a category and a month then combine pre-calculated item JSON and return it to clients.

Second step for (2) is choosing database that is faster and more suitable to de-normalize and query data. Key-value stores are super fast but only support query data by key. Distributed / Map-Reduce (Riak, HBase ..) is overkill. In this case, MongoDB seem to be a perfect fit. MongoDB is very fast (memory mapping), flexible data structure and rich & fast queries (indexing). In MongoDB, listings can be stored in item document it self as an array of [category, month] pairs then can be indexed for fast querying.

Third step for (2) is minimizing data size for each item. MongoDB try to keep indexes and recently used data in memory so smaller data size mean less memory needed. Smaller data size also mean faster data transfer between database and app instances. To minimize data size I do following tricks:

Use short field name (cm instead of categories_months ...)
Use short image name (/items/1.jpg instead of /items/this_is_the_best_image_for_item_1.jpg)
Zlib to compress pre-calculated JSON
Smaz to compress small strings

After lot of micro-optimization, item data size is reduced to one third (33%).

The final result is amazing. On the server side, API queries are 20 times faster and often take less than 10ms. Everybody is happy :)

Posted via email from Alex Nguyen

Polyglot Persistence: The Architecture of the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Thu, 05 May 2011 03:00:00 +0000

via nosql.mypopescu.com

If NoSQL is fast enough, is cache layer necessary? - or- Can we use NoSQL as a cache layer for RDBMS?

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NoSQL Databases and Couchbase: NoSQL Scalability & Performance | Couchbase

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:08:00 +0000

Because vendors of RDBMS technology have little incentive to disrupt a technology generating billions of dollars for them annually, application developers were forced to take matters into their own hands. Google (Big Table) and Amazon (Dynamo) are two leading web application developers who invented, developed and depend on their own database technologies. These “NoSQL” databases, each eschewing the relational data model, are a far better match for the needs modern interactive software systems.

via couchbase.com

A nice introduction to NoSQL.

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What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology.

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:46:00 +0000

Focus on the road not the wall—When they train racecar drivers, one of the first lessons is when you are going around a curve at 200 MPH, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that. There are always a thousand things that can go wrong and sink the ship. If you focus too much on them, you will drive yourself nuts and likely capsize your company. Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

via techcrunch.com

I found "focus on the road" technique worked for me for both business and life. Overall it's a great post. Read and enjoy it.

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Salesforce.com Buys Heroku For $212 Million In Cash

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:41:00 +0000

“The next era of cloud computing is social, mobile and real-time. I call it Cloud 2,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Ruby is the language of Cloud 2, and Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service for Cloud 2 that is fueling this growing community. We think this acquisition will uniquely position salesforce.com as the cornerstone for the next generation of app developers.”

via techcrunch.com

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What if Doctors were Treated Like Web Developers?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:26:00 +0000

via agent-x.com.au

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Who is using HBase and / or Cassandra?

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:26:00 +0000

via netuality.ro

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NoSQL for Big Data

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:26:00 +0000

From "Cassandra Explained"

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Ruby and Rails Ecosystem Whitepaper

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:25:00 +0000

via infoether.com

Posted via web from Alex Nguyen

Five Steps to Building an Interdependent Team

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:25:00 +0000

1. Know what kind of game you are playing and if you’re all playing the SAME game.
Get your team on the same page. If the game you were playing was basketball, it wouldn’t work and you wouldn’t win if 3 of your teammates thought the game was tennis, football, and volleyball. Find out where everyone is at and bring everyone up to speed.

2. Move from activity-based thinking to outcome-based thinking.
It’s not “do more” equals “achieve more”. The equation is “do less” equals “achieve more” by taking actions that directly correspond with the outcome you are out to produce. My team and I call this the DPO (Daily Primary Outcome) for each position, team member, and the practice as a whole.

3. Shift from “surviving” to “thriving.”
In order for your practice, team, and you to thrive, you have to do what I call, Raise Your HDL™. In life you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you THINK you deserve. Nothing more. Nothing less. Consider that we all have an imaginary container that we have built in our minds that limits the capacity of all the things we can have in practice and in life. Imagine how removing that limit on what’s possible for you, your team, and your practice could impact the BIG game you are all playing.

4. Communicate only with facts and outcomes.
I like to call this Managing By Agreement, or MBA. What has worked for my clients and for my own team is to only deal in facts and outcomes. This doesn’t mean that all deadlines will be met. What it does mean is that when there is a broken or missing agreement, the parties involved only speak about those agreements, not how they feel about the agreement, or the drama that could have been caused from it, but simply on the facts.

5. Acknowledge being invisible.
I t’s having your DPOs being fulfilled time and time again, with no one blaming another for any time they aren’t, your team enjoying being at work, your patients receiving world-class customer service, your game being won, and your team working like the well-oiled machine you’ve created by following these five steps.

via garykadi.com

Posted via web from Alex Nguyen

"Web 2.0 isn’t possible without lots of RAM"

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:25:00 +0000

said by John Adams (Twitter)

http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2010/public/schedule/detail/12030

Posted via web from Alex Nguyen

the cost of I/O

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:34:00 +0000

via nosql.mypopescu.com

Google I/O 2010 Day 1 Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:47:00 +0000

* HTML5 (More powerful Web Apps)

* Mobile (Browsers are everywhere)

* WebMProject.org (Open Source Media Technology)
VP8 (Video) + Vorbis (Audio)

* JavaScript (In every browsers)

* Chrome Web App Store (something similar to Apple iTune App Store)

* Interactive Magazine

* Google Wave Platform / API

* Cloud

* Google App Engine for Business
SLA, SSL, SQL DBs

wtf - the only valid code quality measurement

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sat, 15 May 2010 11:10:00 +0000

via flickr.com

NoSQL Presentation: Exellent Intro from Expert

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:49:00 +0000

via nosql.mypopescu.com

HBase vs Cassandra

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Nguyen) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:17:00 +0000

In my opinion, these differing histories have resulted in HBase being more suitable for data warehousing, and large scale data processing and analysis (for example, such as that involved when indexing the Web) and Cassandra being more suitable for real time transaction processing and the serving of interactive data. Writing a proper study of that hypothesis is well beyond this post, but I believe you will be able to detect this theme recurring when considering the databases.

via ria101.wordpress.com