Marc Balmer

This talk is for programmers that whish to integrate PostgreSQL in their applications or who maintain applications that use PostgreSQL as their primary database.

Whereas PostgreSQL claims to be "the most advanced open source database in the world", many client applications don't use advanced features, but rather a - maybe portable - subset of what PostgreSQL has to offer. Often we see applications that claim to be "database neutral" and that support many databases. These applications can then, of course, only use the least common denominator of the features of all databases. Once an application developer has decided to use PostgreSQL only, he is then ready to unveil the real power of PostgreSQL and to make use of advanced features and PostgreSQL specific functionality.

In his talk, Marc Balmer will show a number of tips, or rather programming and usage patterns, that allow you to create and maintain better PostgreSQL applications.

The Lua scripting language has been designed from the ground up to be embedded in other software, usually written in languages like C or C++. In this talk, NetBSD developer Marc Balmer will present his ongoing work to use the Lua scripting language in the NetBSD kernel. He will present the general architecture of the lua(4) subsystem and how it can be used to leverage kernel development in general.

Some practical examples are shown and there should be a discussion about the future of lua(4).

This talk will focus on using the Lua Programming Language to Create a Graphical User Interface

Most toolkits for graphical user interfaces organize the elements of the user interface, typically called "widgets", in a hierarchy: Starting with some container like a dialog or window at the top, the elements like push buttons, labels, or layout managers are added. To add new elements a set of C functions is provided which are called with a handle to the parent widget, the class (or type) of widget that is to be added plus any further arguments like e.g. a label string in the case of a push button. While it is relatively easy to expose the widget creation and managing functions to Lua, the resulting Lua program will still closely resemble the same functionality coded in C. So the aim is to use Lua's table constructors to define a GUI instead of calling the widget creation routines.

The Lua scripting language has been designed to be embedded into software written in C to allow for scripting and extending of such software. Lua is popular because it is easy to integrate and the language itself is simple and easy to learn. The compact code size and small memory footprint make it a candidate for embedded use. Most Lua use cases are to extend end-user software, like e.g. the popular game "World of Warcraft" or the photo editing and archiving software "Adobe Lightroom". In this presentation, however, the author will show how Lua can be used in an operating system kernel. An actual implementation will be presented based on the NetBSD Unix-like open source operating system.