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I'm experimenting with using node.js beyond the server as a general-purpose scripting and application programming language.
One project on my TODO list would be a Windows service so I'm considering tackling it with node.js
I believe I have seen some kind of Windows API bindings for node.js but I don't know how complete or mainstream they are. (I'm willing to contribute!)
What would it take to implement a Windows service in node.js? (Trivial example appreciated.)
You should be able to do this very easily using Winser.
Try node-windows. It's similar to WinSer, but has more options.
Facing the programming for the wsadmin scripting client I see that you can use both jacl and jython.
I've the same level of confidence with both two languages.
I'm wondering if, in the specific of wsadmin programming , there are advantages of using one language over the other; such as robustness, availability of examples or libraries for websphere administration, or something like that arisen from your experience in the use and building of this kind of scripts.
Jython is the language to prefer:
Rational Application Developer has tooling support for Jyton (Jython editor, debugger, command completition, and ability to test your scripts against your test server inside IDE).
WebSphere administrative console provides console command assistance; it gives you scripting equivalents of the operations you perform using administrative console in case you want to automate them. This assistance uses Jython as language.
Even if Jacl had been the default language for wsadmin, IBM promotes Jython for future, and even provided a tool to convert Jacl scripts to Jython. Quoting from description of this tool at given link;
When selecting a scripting language, Jython is the strategic direction
as the administration scripting language for WebSphere Application
Server because future enhancements of the scripting language is
focused on the use of Jython.
I'm not trying to question any of previous responses, just add some facts.
Although Jython is the "strategic" directions, Jacl has been there since WAS v4. In WAS v8.5 it is still the default (and deprecated!).
The administrative API was written with Jacl in mind. With Jython one you have to do tricks like this one to get server list as list:
for srv in AdminConfig.list('Server').splitlines():
print srv
whereas in Jacl one can simply do this:
foreach srv [$AdminConfig list Server] {
puts $srv
}
Obviously, many AdminConfig and AdminControl methods return lists as newline-separated string.
IBM has really cornered itself with Jython and Jacl. They're still using Jython 2.1 (released in 2002, even in the latest and greatest WAS v8.5). Jacl isn't actively supported by the community. The API is Jacl-friendly, wasn't rewritten for Jython. Lots of client solutions are based on the tricks you have to do in Jython, there's plenty of Jacl-based solutions. Even IBM internally has a plenty of dependencies on that legacy. This might be the reason why Jacl is deprecated since WAS v5.1 and still default.
In short:
If you're going to write a small script for a specific task, Jacl may be more convenient for you (since you've mentioned that you're comfortable with both Python and Tcl)
Should you however be interested in developing larger framework for managing your WAS infrastructure, then Jython with its object-orientation may be a better option. But don't expect too much from that version of Jython - it's quite buggy and you won't be able to use too many Python libraries simply because they dropped Python2.1 support loooong time ago.
The conclusion is: it's not that simple answer (which means that you've asked a good question).
I've got these machine that output a lot of data. Unfortunately, the files outputted are structured in a strange way. I'd like to be able to do some complex text processing (perl style) to parse the data and be able to output to Excel format. I'd also like to automate this but the only server that I can use is running Windows XP (with Office) and I'm not allowed to install any extraneous software (no .NET, Powershell, ActivePerl, etc.)
What is the best way to do this? Are regex in VB/VBA powerful enough for me to script in Excel?
I'd recommend using something like AutoIt. It has an inbuilt regex engine and there is an excel standard include. It can compile to a standalone exe so fits the bill. It's also pretty simple as a langauge, so shouldn't take to long to figure out coming from other languages.
Can you recommend me any SAS alternatives for Mac? I would not use any Parallel like solution. Which andvantage Oracle technology has in front of SAS?
If you are familiar with SAS already, there is JMP - it's developed by SAS and runs on the Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
WPS works with the SAS language and does much of what base SAS does. It doesn't have a GUI on the mac (yet) but it will run scripts of SAS code from thus command line. Most 9.2 syntax is supported including macros.
I successfully run SAS University Edition in my Mac. In the background it runs a VMWare Machine, and I connect to it using SAS Studio in Safari. If you prefer not to do the calculations on your Mac at all it is possible to have VM run in a free-Tier Amazon AWS Machine, thus you don't need to install anything at all on your Mac.
More info on the official SAS® University Edition website.
You can open SAS datasets if they have been exported as transport datasets.
This takes a 4 line SAS program to do, so it is not hard.
You can set up the SAS server in a parallels/VMware machine on the same Mac (I am planning to do this soon, I have seen a set up like this running, so it does work ;-)
From the Stats POV there is little JMP cannot do - what is missing is specialized (eg proc genetics is not available on JMP).
From a data exploration POV JMP is much better than SAS and has many features SAS does not have - principally dynamic selection of observations (often called brushing). It does also do data manipulation - joins, transpose, etc, simply and well.
The latest JMP can call R programs so if you are avoiding SAS because of fees then that is a way to go.
Oracle is a whole other story more focused on databases and applications built on them. SAS is built in the other direction from the reporting down to the data.
HTH
I would like to build a graphical application that must work on at least Windows, Linux and MacOS. I would like to know what do you suggest I should use.
I have some experience with Java and C++ but I thought about using Java Swing first. What do you think or further suggest (like maybe tools or frameworks)? I also may be needing to connect to a PostgreSQL database to store data.
Java is probably the simplest way to get your application working on all 3 platforms as well as to add database support. All of these are equally possible in C++, but it definitely involves more work because you need to learn to use a cross-platform widget toolkit. Also, C++ database drivers usually have wildly varying designs but Java presents a unified interface via JDBC - this also means that you can change your underlying DB at any time without having to change your code.
I would use the Qt platform from Nokia. It supports all the OSes that you've mentioned and has also database connectors for PostgreSQL but also for MySQL, SQLite, etc.
It also has a very nice IDE, the QT Creator that you can use should you pick Qt.
I would suggest Qt too. Qt has seen very good development recently, their examples and documentation base is quite large, and the LGPL license is flexible too, for creating proprietary software. It has a good Qt Creator IDE, a Qt GUI Designer. Plus is has quite a number of modules, enabling it to be used in conjunction with other language developed apps/libraries. And, it is used in commercial/public apps like Google Earth, Skype (maybe only the linux version). So, it has a good history of reliability. And yeah, for Database, it has modules, like Qt-Sql. Another advantage you get over java is speed.
wxWidgets does cross-platform easily enough, using available native toolkits. You could probably use a ORM for the database part, but I don't have enough experience using them under C++ to provide an actual informed opinion there.
GTK is cross-platform. Pidgin uses it and manages to get away with being generally considered a fully-cross-platform app. The installer size is a problem, though.