Web Services - Node.js and Flatiron a start.

Things do not always go according to plans. Yesterday I started to make plans for an Ubuntu private cloud, where I will migrate my Business Intelligence application The Data Warehouse . While thinking about the hardware I opened up my mailbox and found one mail that attracted my attention. It was a request for a Data Warehouse Web Service API. The sender a very experienced Lotus Notes consultant was obviously dissatisfied with the only two interfaces to the Data Warehouse ODBC and JDBC, ‘rigid and old fashioned’ he wrote. WTF my apps should be flexible and futuristic. The consultant was kind to specify what he meant by Web service and suggested me to study WSDL as a starting point.

I’m not an experienced Web programmer. I did what I usually do when I do not know a subject, I asked my friend Google and after a while I found myself study a Node.js tutorial. After some fiddling around with some simple node.js script I realised I can do a lot with this, actually web services is something I should have done a long time ago. Why not use PHP the web-language I already know? The simple reason is I do not know Node.js and it seems even more fit for creating Web Services than PHP. I decided to use a framework from the beginning, and I chosed Flatiron.

Now the problems started; I do not now web development, I do not know JavaScript, I do not know Node.js, I do not know the Flatiron framework. Embarrassingly I did not understand much when I started to create my first Flatiron project. The Flatiron documentation I find is meager. This morning I admitted to myself, I do not have the necessary skills to develop Flatiron/Node.js apps, so I bought the Kindle version of ‘The Node Beginners Book’ by Manuel Kiessling, if the book is what is says it will teach me the basis of JavaScript and Node.js.

Yesterday morning I started by planning for an Ubuntu Cloud and ended up utterly confused of the for me new concepts of Node.js. One thing I know though, if I manage to create Web Services  they will be simple, flexible and futuristic node.js apps floating around in an Ubuntu cloud. When? I do not now, time flies and the backlog at the office is just piling up.