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Interview with Mr. Maxim Peresada
RIND Weekly Newsletter #2
#7 Components
http://sedlan.com
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This week
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Hello again,
This week, I've had a great pleasure preparing a newsletter for
you guys and gals. This time it's interview with "Project Supervisor of
Torry's Delphi Pages", as he likes to call himself. There is probably no
need to explain what this site is all about. Everyone knows where to look for
freeware or shareware Delphi code (BCB too):
http://www.torry.net
Anyway, let's start... Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Maxim Peresada:
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The Interview
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Q: Torry's Delphi Pages is one of the biggest sites on the Net
related to Delphi. When did you start building it (is there a "birthday"),
and how did you manage to attract so many visitors? Actually, it would be nice
to know just how many visitors are there monthly?
A: I think that Torry's is the biggest at this time - full size
of the site is about 3 GB, but I think DSP isn't too far behind. One of the
reasons for this might be that my primary job is programming and I'm programming
in Delphi since 1995. On the other hand, Robert's (maintainer of DSP) primary
job isn't related to Delphi, so he is not able to spend a lot of time surfing
the Net and updating the site. However, I specially want to say that I'm very
proud that Robert and I have a very good cooperation and he is always ready
to help. Just one more time: he is simply on a different kind of job for now.
Torry's was born as a private collection of components for our
own needs. We started to collect them in early 1996 with Victor Gvozdev and
in the beginning of November decided to make it available to the public. Officially,
the site was born on November 18th, 1996 and was located at Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov
Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Carbohydrate Chemistry Laboratory Server (http://carbohyd.siobc.ras.ru),
where another friend of mine, Vitaly Nasonov, kept working till present time.
In February 1998 the site was moved to Glasnet Internet Service Provider server
(now part of Golden Telecom Company - http://www.online.ru)
and I should say that their support was excellent. Due to huge traffic we had
to rent a dedicated server on SuperbNet (http://www.superb.net)
in November 2000. Every day our primary site is visited by over 7000 users.
We also have 10 mirrors Worldwide, but I don't know their statistics.
Q: Is Torry's a "one man operation", or do you have people helping
you? If so, does that make you their boss? Tell me a little about the people
behind the Torry's success.
A: As I said, we started Torry's with Victor Gvozdev, but due to
several problems he left us at the Summer 1997. I'd like to say that now we
work together again for Microolap Technologies LLC (http://www.microolap.com)
and Torry's Search Engine is the result of technology we're using in Microolap
projects.
Current Torry's Team and short notes about each of members:
Vitaly Nasonov - design, graphics, Web-mastering
http://carb.siobc.ras.ru/nasonov/
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In short: without him, Torry's would never have its present look. He has done
all graphics, web-design and PHP programming and I think that he is one of the
best web designers in the world. Note that he is not a professional programmer,
but chemistry scientist.
Sergey Bilukin - Mirror Department Chief
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He handles almost all mirror contents, so I think that people from different
countries should know who brings him fresh content almost every day. His primary
job is radio engineer and his hobby is sound recording.
Artem Berman - Maintainer of DP&FL section
http://www.cooldev.com
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Author of many well-known components and tools for Delphi and C++ Builder programmers
(CoolMenus, CoolControls and many more). I don't think there are many developers
who haven't heard of him.
Sergey Ivanov - Maintainer of Magnitogorsk mirror
http://www.magnitka.ru/~sergey
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Works for internal Torry's needs, which is not seen by visitors, but requires
every day effort for Torry's functionality.
Maxim Peresada - main idea, project supervisor, maintaining,
programming...
mperesada@glasnet.ru
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Author of software that handles Torry's database, generating HTML pages and
so on. Also maintains Torry's content.
Q: How did you manage to get so many mirror sites, and how do
you manage to keep them all up-to-date? Is it time consuming? In other words,
is it expensive?
A: Almost all mirror sites are created by initiative of their handlers
and almost all of them have big incoming traffic, which covers mirrors' outgoing
traffic. As I said, mirrors are maintained, in general by Sergey - he wrote
special scripts and transfers files at the night from Moscow. So, time differences
for different countries allow us to make it look like the mirrors are updated
almost at the same time (in reality, first updated mirror is located in Magnitogorsk,
Russia).
Q: Tell me about your primary site. Where is it hosted and how
fast and reliable is the host? I guess it's on a dedicated machine. Am I right?
A: Yes, you're right. We rent dedicated server by SuperbNet (http://www.superb.net).
It's located in Washington DC, USA. The server is a Celeron 600MHz with 512
Mbytes of RAM, and it's connected to Internet backbone by Ethernet 100 Card.
Software: RedHat 6.2, Apache 1.14, MySQL (for banner rotating system), Sybase
SQL Anywhere for Search Engine.
Currently, we're not satisfied with server speed in period from
12:00 till 19:00 (Moscow Time -> GMT + 03) and with our ISP, we're still
trying to find the way to increase it. But I should say, that SuperbNet personnel
is very qualified and their support is excellent. I hope this is just a temporary
problem and we'll fix it shortly. This could be result of using MySQL, because
server carries from 200 to 500 users per hour. We will switch to Sybase in the
future.
Q: There is a BIG collection of Delphi components, both freeware
and shareware on Torry's. How many are there? Do you have some statistics about
number of components in each category?
A: In total, we have over 6000 products listed on Torry's, over
4500 of them are freeware.
Q: Congratulations on your search page. It certainly was waited
by everyone. I have looked at it, and it seems like a great tool. How hard was
it to develop a search engine for so many resources?
A: Thank you! The most serious part was to make Search Database
equal to Primary Database, i.e. replication, because Primary Database is located
near Moscow. The structure of database wasn't changed since the first Generator
for Torry's was made, so, I can say that I had developed excellent structure
:-)))
First DB I used locally for Generator was Btrieve 6.15 (I just
wanted to be able to update the site from different locations and always be
able to start work in a few minutes after I arrive), then I switched to DBISAM
(http://www.elevatesoft.com).
After I joined Microolap Technologies (their primary DB are Sybase Databases),
I had the ability to use ASADAC components to access office Sybase ASA by direct
calls from the same software (almost without modifications), so now Primary
Search DB updates in the same time as DBISAM DB (they are different a bit to
hold information about books, sites and so on).
All headaches for replication are Sybase ASE's headache now :-).
Note that Search Engine isn't completed yet and we keep working to improve its
speed and possibilities.
Q: Do you program in Delphi? What kind of applications?
A: Yes, I program with Delphi since it's first pre-release (and
before that, I used different versions of Turbo Pascal and MS C). The most interesting
project was a system for wood factories connectivity in Siberia, special trade
systems for cash & carry shops (mostly, client-server Btrieve based systems).
Currently I'm working for several Microolap projects, mostly as consultant and
developer of special database replication system, which, I hope, will be database
independent. It is based on ASTA technology (http://www.astatech.com)
which I recommend to everyone interested in M-Tier projects. I do not think
of myself as a good component writer, I enjoy more writing applications.
Q: When you surf the Net, what Delphi sites do you visit regularly?
A: At the beginning there was Delphi Deli (http://www.delphideli.com)
and DSP. Now I visit DSP, DelphiPages and DelphiCity.net, Borland newsgroups,
Russian site Delphi Kingdom. Of course, sites of vendors, whose products I use
often: ASTA, Developer Express (http://www.devexpress.com),
Utilmind Solutions (http://www.appcontrols.com),
CoolDev.com (http://www.cooldev.com),
DBISAM and several others. I spend two or three hours a day for Internet surfing
and am almost always connected to Internet at the daytime.
Q: Everybody knows that a good interview is not just making a conversation.
It also has to have a certain amount of tricky questions <g>. Here it
is: why don't you have download counters for the authors? If I remember correctly,
you promised it a long time ago.
A: The reason is very simple: we download and process logs and
send (and publish) results to authors during several years. Since May last year
I work for other company (do you remember about incoming/outgoing traffic?),
size of compressed week log file for Torry's is about 60 MB, so, due to my local
ISP prices it will cost us near $500 per month. Of course, we can use CGI for
counting, but that would get mirror handlers in trouble. Until we do not solve
problems with Primary site speed, we just can't bring visitors additional troubles.
I think we will write special software to process logs on server as soon as
we get Kylix - now we have a stable Database at Primary site and have all to
implement this finally (except Kylix) :-))). Also, it is very possible that
we will try to implement this in some other way.
Q: What are your plans for the future? How is Torry's going
to grow? Do you have any plans for supporting Kylix too?
A: Yes, we will have separate Kylix section, which will be almost
identical to current Torry's look and feel, but due to small number of Kylix
products, it will be smaller in the beginning, compared to Delphi and C++ Builder
site.
Other plans:
1. Forums, where developers will be able to support their customers and users.
Forums will public and private. Due to several problems we wasn't able to start
them (Forums software was installed on the other ISP server and we're simply
afraid to install it on Primary site for now)
2. Mail-lists, those are broken for now because of numerous bugs
in the software that we're using.
3. Software-related articles and reviews, mostly from Russian
developers, so it will be almost exclusive material.
4. Desktop version of Torry's - psst, it's a secret
Q: Do you feel there was an important question I should have
asked you about?
A: Kylix :-))) Indeed, I don't have any ideas about it, because
it looks like it will mainly be used for client-side applications, but I don't
think that Linux is a good client operation system. It should be used as server
platform only. I used Linux over a year and prefer NT Workstation for my needs.
But, we have one Linux server for experiments in our office. My opinion (I can
be wrong), is that Kylix will bring increase of revenue at the beginning for
Borland, but at the end of this year most programmers will be disappointed with
situation of Linux popularity and Kylix will become "just a toy",
but not a tool for successful development and sales (I do not mean big companies).
So, I expect that next year will bring us "the same old situation"
all over again - Unix, Netware, NT, etc -based power servers and Windows clients.
My strong opinion - users of software we all make need a break for two or three
years to learn how to use existing technologies. We have a very big gap between
users and developers.
Q: Is there something you'd like to say to Delphi Developers
around the world?
A: Life is too short to spend it all near computer :-))) Software
development speed is increased a lot and there are many things that are already
done - just look around (and we will try to help you). Best wishes in all your
projects.
Q?: Well, this is about it. Thanks a lot.
A?: Thank you, Jovan, for a chance to say something, maybe, interesting
:-))
Excuse the length of this interview, but if you were just a bit
excited reading this as I was preparing it, you'll forgive me. Stay tuned, I'm
preparing more interesting stuff for the weeks to come.
Your HLO,
Jovan Sedlan
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DISCLAIMER: You are hereby notified that "Q:" in the above text means
"question" and "A:" means "answer". Any other
(mis)interpretation is
strictly forbidden.
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