TECHNICAL BLOG - JULY, 2011

Following up on my last blog post, and also on some of the information I presented in the 4D Summit 2011 Pre-Class, I've updated one of my systems to an Intel 7-series motherboard and benchmarked a RAID 0 SSD array. Read on for the results!

Exciting news this week as Intel has announced (via journalists apparently, I can't find an official posting) that the TRIM command is now passed though to RAID 0 SSD arrays.

Today I posted an update to the CodeExport GitHub project to remove its one and only plug-in dependency (for compile-time at least). Thanks to Kirk Brooks for pointing out the problem! Read on to find out what I did.

Just a quick update today, prompted by a The Tech Report article presenting an in-depth analysis of the plummeting cost of SSD's over the last year. I've also been watching the prices daily, read on for more details.

If you're at all involved in other projects besides 4D you're probably aware of GitHub, or perhaps you've heard of it otherwise (I mentioned it during the recent webinar about SVN and 4D).

GitHub is hugely popular with the Web-development crowd and, to a larger/growing extent, anyone involved in the Open Source community. It might seem strange that 4D, being a proprietary platform vendor, would get involved with GitHub (or maybe even look like band-wagoning :). That's definitely not the case though, this is really a guerrilla effort to get the 4D community out in the open in a more structured fashion. If you want access to some cool 4D tools, or have something the contribute, read on!

The consumer SSD space is evolving at quite a rapid pace, so I've decided it might be useful to the 4D community to try to do a regular series of updates as I come across interesting SDD news items. I'm calling it the "4D SSD Watch". I'm also a huge advocate for the switch to flash storage, so I do this not because I think I'm an expert but, rather, because I'm trying to keep a close eye on this stuff. For this update I'm looking at three important items:

• SanDisk, purveyor of all things flash (except SSD's until now) has made a rather strong entry into the consumer SSD market.
• Intel has discovered a non-fixable flaw with their series 520 SSD's and is offering a full refund on the drives.
• Apple continues its proprietary ways with yet another non-starndard SSD configuration in the new MacBook Pro.

Welcome to my first 4D Blog post! I don't know who gave me permission to do this but they must be crazy (right Michel?!)

I'm hoping to make my 4D Blog less of a marketing outlet and more of a personal journal (as Blogs are supposed to be). Most importantly my plan is to post information relevent to 4D developers. We have a renewed mandate to foster a community amoung the 4D faithful (and maybe get a few more to join the fold!)

With that in mind...

In this blog post, Thomas Maul gives a preview of a topic that he'll explain in great detail as one of the in-depth subjects of the 4D Summit 2011 Pre-class. The Pre-class will give attendees a unique opportunity to learn master-level skills from 4D's senior engineers.