Cubegeek

Ruby Speaks MAXL

Look what I just found, Ruby MAXL. Props to Jon Israelson.

The Ruby/MaxL extension module allows Ruby programs to directly interact with Hyperion Essbase OLAP databases using Hyperion’s MaxL command language. Ruby scripts utilizing this module are portable across both Unix and Win32 platforms. Ruby/MaxL can also be combined with the Ruby/EssApi module (coming soon) to tap into the full Essbase API without having to write any C code.

XDE Reborn

For what it's worth, I could have been a famous zillionaire by now. That is because I was the network admin for what once was one of the largest LANs in the world, back in 1986. It was the Xerox ESXC16 domain and it consisted of over 150 D-Machines. I cannot remember the exact details, but it was one of the top domains in Xerox outside of PARC, OSBU-South, OSBU-North and Rochester128. We had over 900MB of file service, both a PUP Gateway and a full set of XNS servers and services including about 11 print servers, a Clearinghouse and a couple of mail servers. We had one of the first fiber optic ethernet hubs on the planet. It was the bomb.

Over the weekend, I happened on to some interesting documents on and off the web. It has gotten me really jazzed about some Xerox nostalgia. Just this morning, I hit the mother lode. It turns out that some cat named Don Woodward has created a virtual D-Machine for Win32. On my very desktop, right now, is a copy of Dawn and a Tajo 15.3 environment. Is this mind-blowing or what?

Every year I go through a period of depression thinking about what might have been had Xerox been successful in marketing and selling the networks, operating systems, workstations and printers that they developed. And then thinking about it today, I wonder how little it might have meant considering the death of computing kings like NCR, DEC and Silicon Graphics, not to mention Apollo, Cray, and Symbolics. Still, a small but a mighty big word is 'if'. Then I wake up and realize that there were people there at Xerox who said that there was no future in email - that business people would never trust it and managers would never learn to type.

Xerox & My Alternative Future

I just submitted the following to Digibarn:

The Xerox Documentor was a package which consisted of a Xerox 6085 loaded with Viewpoint software crippled so that its ethernet connectivity was disabled. I had a standalone laser printer, the Xerox 4045 attached via a proprietary (not RS232 or Centronics) interface cable. It was sold as a complete desktop publishing system and was to sell for about $10,000. The inventor of the concept of the Documentor was Charlie Levy and it was in this configuration that Xerox sold more 6085s than in any other way. The 6085 as a networked workstation was a market failure - Xerox 'sold' more of them to Xerox than to any other company. For this configuration Charlie Levy won the President's Award, the highest that Xerox offered employees.

And it's making me think about a whole bunch of things I know and remember about Xerox. I'll document some of that here.