Erlang Training and Consulting Newsletter 18th August 2009

Contents

• Erlang Courses in the USA
• ETC at Conferences
• JAOO 2009 Discount Code
  
• Erlang User Group Meetings
• Free Wrangler Tutorial
• Erlang Journey to the Clouds
  
• Erlang Blogs

New Release of the ErlangWeb

New exciting features for the open source MVC ErlangWeb framework were introduced in 1.4 RC1 release this week bringing even more powerful tools for web developers. Inspired by the popularity and ease of use of the Django, the Django Templating Language was introduced and based on the ErlyDTL application. We also adapted EWGI - a mechanism for interaction between web servers and applications. It was inspired by Python's PEP 333 and provides similar functionality to other projects such as Ruby's Rack. Recently added components are TwittErl, a set of modules allowing you to communicate with Twitter out of the box, and ew_backup performing database backups.

You can download tarball with the latest release candidate from Erlang Web site at http://www.erlang-web.org/. Stay with us and do not hesitate to ask questions and provide feedback!

Submit a talk for the Erlang User Conference in Stockholm

Submit your talk for review by the Erlang User Conference committee and get free entry to the conference if it is accepted! We welcome submissions from developers, system designers, testers, community leaders, inventors, CTOs, evangelists, students, researchers and entrepreneurs alike. Participants at the Erlang User Conference want to hear about how Erlang/OTP is used real-world scenarios, talks about tricks, tools and applications which increase productivity or enable developers to write better code.

Erlang e-Learning Developer

Erlang Training and Consulting together with the University of Kent has received a government grant to develop an Erlang/OTP e-learning application. We are looking for a high-flying graduate to work with us to transform our classroom training materials for Erlang into a state-of-the-art e-learning programme. The position is supported by the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) programme, and as part of that you will receive management and other skills training, much like graduate training programmes in larger companies, leading to a Diploma in Management. More about the position.
Closing date for receipt of applications: Wednesday 02 Sep 2009.
Interviews are likely to be held: Friday 11 Sep 2009.

Erlang Programming has a book website!

We invite you to visit website dedicated to Erlang Programming book. You can find there a description of the book with introductions to every chapter, reviews, information about the authors and other Erlang related information we hope you find interesting. You can also download the code examples used in the various chapters and exchange questions, suggestions and solutions with other readers from the Erlang Programming Google Group.

Erlang Blogs

A security flaw has been detected in the java.security package, which makes it exposed to "timing attacks". This sort of attack exploits the behaviour of certain algorithms, such that conclusions can be drawn based on how long it takes for it to respond.  The proposed solution is to use constant-time algorithms, e.g. scan every character each time, even if you don't have to. It would be interesting to find out whether these types of attack could be defeated by taking advantage of the concurrency-oriented nature of Erlang and its robustness in the face of timing variations (this is normally used to make Erlang programs tolerant to non-deterministic timing, but could also be used to make the Erlang programs themselves exhibit non-deterministic timing behaviour).