XInclude, jaxp and xerces

XInclude defines a powerful way to control inclusions of xml fragments in another xml file:

<xi:include
    xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
    href="source.xml"
    xpointer="xpointer(string-range(chapter/p[1],'Sentence 2')/range-to(string-range(/chapter/p[2]/i,'3.',1,2)))">
</xi:include>

This looks good, however in reality none of the current parser implementations support that ! For example, Xerces (implemented in jaxp 1.3 & 1.4) only supports xpointer="element(...)". This makes it almost useless, unless a whole tree has to be included. It is not possible to easily merge two xml files this way.

Frédéric Laurent already noticed this 3 years ago... It's time for a Java expert to implement it in Xerces !

VirtualBox and VMware server ESX

When using the VMware Infrastructure Client GUI to connect to the VMware ESX Hypervisor, I encountered a nasty problem. It was not possible to upload a Virtual Machine image, or even an iso image to boot on. Every attempt to add a file to a datastore ended with an "IO error"popup, and the file was not copied.

The GUI was running inside a Windows XP virtual machine, running inside VirtualBox.

When running the GUI from a native Windows machine, it worked.

There seems to be an issue in the way the VMware Infrastructure Client GUI interfaces the VirtualBox disk driver.

Versions used:
VMware Infrastructure Client 2.5.0.
VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0.
VirtualBox 1.6.4.

Aerial Photos of new road in Montbonnot

Here are some aerial photos of the industrial park of Montbonnot, that show the soon-to-be-opened new RD11M road. These pictures show both ends of the new road.

These pictures were taken with a small radio-controlled airplane.
More details and pictures can be found here.

Voici des photos aériennes de la zone industrielle de Montbonnot, montrant la nouvelle route RD11M (pas encore inaugurée). ces images montrent les deux extrémités de la nouvelle route.

Ces images ont été prises avec un petit avion radio-commandé.
Plus de détails et d'images ici.