neyric’s Javascript

I’m pleased to announce the first release of WireIt (version 0.1) !

WireIt is a javascript library that allows you to create cool wires like Yahoo Pipes. It is built upon:

• the CANVAS tag to render the wires
• the YUI Library v2.3.1
• excanvas for IE support

It comes with some examples (see the home page) and an application example, the Planar Game.

Why would you make such a library ? After playing a lot with Yahoo! Pipes, I realized how powerful it was to create mashups. I was already used to visual programming Languages like PureData or Mac OS Automator, but they’re definitly not able to do mashups.

However, Yahoo Pipes has this big inconvenient to run your pipes on their web servers. It has at least two disadvantages. First, it means we will always be restricted to the modules and types they implemented. You could always create a restful webservice and wrap it into a pipe, but the execution time blows up. Second disadvantage, you have to be careful with your data privacy. Indeed, I would like to create some Mashups that could mix with my private data in a more secure way.

That’s how I started to develop a Yahoo pipes-like application, and how I ran into this stumble block: “How the hell did they do those pipes ?”.

Waiting for your feedback,
Eric

I’ve been using Google Gears rather intensively (see Gears In Motion) during the last few months.

I started building an interface that uses all the components of Google Gears (Local Database, Local Server and WorkerPool), and implemented a synchronization engine. The result was a much more responsive offline application with many features that couldn’t have been easily implemented without the local database, and that works great !

Until… one of my coworker tried to import 20.000 records: It took 40 minutes to execute the SQL INSERT statements ! (approx. 120ms/insertion)

We then decided to write this 100 insertions test, which revealed to have surprising results :

• On MacOS 10.4.11: 2.6ms by insertion (approx. 385 insertions/second)
• On Windows XP and Vista: 107ms by insertion (approx. 9 insertions/second)

Please run the test and post your results as a comment indicating your OS/Browser version/Google Gears version.

Any idea why it is so slow on Windows ?