Technology

If you are a nerd, you might be wondering what Reporo is made of. The short version: it's regular web pages served up by Apache, Tomcat, Java, with Perl operational glue, all running on Linux and developed on Ubuntu Linux. We use MySQL when we need to do databasy things. We use memcached to keep the database from getting crushed.

If you're not crying from boredom yet, read on for further details.

Java is one of the greatest programming languages in the world. It might not be as fashionable as some modern object orientated scripting languages, but it done alot to help them come about. There are a ton of great, free, widely tested libraries to do everything under the sun, and it is quite efficient. And it is well-supported by developer tools on all computing platforms.

Perl, of course, is the great do-everything of scripting languages. It is not exactly elegant, but it is supremely powerful in qualified hands.

MySQL is a modern, easy-to-use and free or very inexpensive (depending on how you use it) relational database. It is very reliable, and very fast. I'm not saying that you should take your gigantic multi-site global banking system and port it to use MySQL, but for maintaining our data, it's just fine.

memcached is a distributed memory cache. It works for many languages, but we use it for Java. It is a magic bullet that lets you scale up massively without buying massive, expensive, complex database hardware. I can't believe this stuff wasn't built in on so-called "network" operating systems years ago.

We run the Mwah & Phwah web site on Linux because it is free and it works and we love it.