Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

I put this piece together in response to another stimulating post by Dare Obasanjo titled "Is Google the Next Microsoft or the Next Netscape?". I changed the title of this post to project the fact that Web 2.0 provides the appropriate context (IMHO) for Dare's point re. "Web Site Stickiness".

Stickiness is a defining characteristic of Web 1.0 . It's all about eyeballs (site visitors) which implied ultimately that all early Web business models ended up down the advertising route.

I always felt that Web 1.0 was akin to having a crowd of people at your reception area seeking a look at your corporate brochures, and then someone realizes that you could start selling AD space in these brochures in response to the growing crowd size and frequency of congregation. The long-term folly of this approach is now obvious, as many organizations forgot their core value propositions (expressed via product offerings) in the process and wandered blindly down the AD model cul-de-sac, and we all know what happened down there..

Web 2.0 is taking shape (the inflection is in its latter stages), and the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are:

1. Fabric of Executable Endpoints
   
2. Semantic Content (the RSS/RDF/Atom/FOAF semantic crumbs emerging from the Blogosphere are great examples of things to come re. XQuery queries over HTTP for instance) Migration from the Web Site (defined by static or dynamic HTML page generation) concept, to that of a "Web Point of Presence" (I don't know if this term will catch on, but the conceptual essence here is factual) that enables an organization to achieve the following:
   
• Package/catalog value proposition (product and services) using RSS/RDF/Atom
  
• Provide SOAP compliant Executable Endpoints (Web Services) for consuming value proposition (as opposed to being distracted by the AD model)
  
• Provide Web Services for consummating contracts associated with core value proposition Identification of internal efficiencies, new products/services that leverage Semantic Content and Web Services, and tangibly exploit:
  
• Composite Web Services construction from legacy monolithic application pools
  
• Standards based (e.g. BPEL) orchestration and integration of disparate composite services (across the Fabric referred to above)

When you factor in all of the above, the real question is whether Google and others are equipped to exploit Web 2.0?  To some degree, is the best answer at the current time as they have commenced the transition from "content only" web site to web platform (via the many Web Services initiatives that expose SOAP and REST interfaces to various services), but there is much more to this journey, and that's the devil in the "competitive landscape details".

From my obviously biased perspective, I think Virtuoso and Yukon+WinFS provide the server models for driving Web 2.0 points of presence (single server instances that implement multiple protocols). Thus, if Google, Yahoo! et al. aren't exploiting these or similar products, then they will be vulnerable over the long term to the competitve challenges that a Web 2.0 landscape will present.

Microsoft Ship Dates Falling Like Dominoes

ANALYSIS: It's not just Longhorn that's a long way off. Now the 'Yukon wave' is receding into 2005. [via Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

Databases get a grip on XML
From Inforworld.

The next iteration of the SQL standard was supposed to arrive in 2003. But SQL standardization has always been a glacially slow process, so nobody should be surprised that SQL:2003 ? now known as SQL:200n ? isn?t ready yet. Even so, 2003 was a year in which XML-oriented data management, one of the areas addressed by the forthcoming standard, showed up on more and more developers? radar screens.  >> READ MORE

This article rounds up product for 2003 in the critical area of Enterprise Database Technology. It's certainly provides an apt reflection of how Virtuoso compares with offerings from some the larger (but certainly slower to implement) database vendors in this space. As usual Jon Udell's quote pretty much sums this up:

"While the spotlight shone on the heavyweight contenders, a couple of agile innovators made noteworthy advances in 2003. OpenLink Software?s Virtuoso 3.0, which we reviewed in March, stole thunder from all three major players. Like Oracle, it offers a WebDAV-accessible XML repository. Like DB2 Information Integrator, it functions as database middleware that can perform federated ?joins? across SQL and XML sources. And like the forthcoming Yukon, it embeds the .Net CLR (Common Language Runtime), or in the case of Linux, Novell/Ximian?s Mono."

Albeit still somewhat unknown to the broader industry we have remained true our "innovator" discipline, which still remains our chosen path to market leadership. Thus, its worth a quick Virtuoso release history, and features recap as we get set to up the ante even further in 2004:

1998 - Virtuoso's initial public beta release with functional emphasis on Virtual Database Engine for ODBC and JDBC Data Sources.

1999 - Virtuoso's official commercial release, with emphasis still on Virtual Database functionality for ODBC, JDBC accessible SQL Databases.

2000 - Virtuoso 2.0 adds XML Storage, XPath, XML Schema, XQuery, XSL-T, WebDAV, SOAP, UDDI, HTTP, Replication, Free Text Indexing (*feature update*), POP3, and NNTP support.

2002 - Virtuoso 2.7 extends Virtualization prowess beyond data access via enhancements to its Web Services protocol stack implementation by enabling SQL Stored Procedures to be published as Web Services. It also debuts its Object-Relational engine enhancements that include the incorporation of Java and Microsoft .NET Objects into its User Defined Type, User Defined Functions, and Stored Procedure offerings.

2003 - Virtuoso 3.0 extends data and application logic virtualization into the Application Server realm (basically a Virtual Application server too!), by adding support for ASP.NET, PHP, Java Server Pages runtime hosting (making applications built using any of these languages deployable using Virtuoso across all supported platforms).

Collectively each of these releases have contributed to a very premeditated architecture and vision that will ultimately unveil the inherent power of critical I.S infrastructure virtualization along the following lines; data storage, data access , and application logic via coherent integration of SQL, XML, Web Services, and Persistent Stored Modules (.NET, Java, and other object based component building blocks).

 

Reading the Longhorn SDK docs is a disorienting experience. Everything's familiar but different. Consider these three examples:

[Full story: Replace and defend via Jon's Radio]

"Replace & Defend" is certainly a strategy that would have awakened the entire non Microsoft Developer world during the recent PDC event. I know these events are all about preaching to the choir (Windows only developers), but as someone who has worked with Microsoft technologies as an ISV since the late 80's there is something about this events announcements that leave me concerned.

Ironically these concerns aren't about the competitive aspects of their technology disruptions, but more along the lines of how Microsoft (I hope inadvertently) generates the kinds of sentiments echoed in the comments thread from Scobles recent "How to hate Microsoft" post. As indicated in my response to this post, I don't believe Microsoft is as bad or evil as is instinctively assumed in many quarters, but I can certainly understand why they are hated by others which is really unfortunate, especially bearing in mind that they have done more good than harm to date (in my humble opinion) .

Anyway, back to my concerns post PDC which I break down as follows:

1. Disruptive assaults on existing standards with the only benefit being Microsoft platform centricity. Jon Udell addressed this in his "Replace and Defend" post (which kicked of this post), and I see exactly what he sees here, and I don't see any reason for this approach whatsoever. Even if one of these standards was deficient what stops the Microsoft from addressing these deficiencies, and then should the W3C's standards acceptance and ratification process bogs things down at least let the industry know you gave it openness a chance but have to move on etc..
   
   
2. Gradual obsolescence of existing Microsoft standards which used to provide interfaces for 3rd party ISV partners, and replacing these with totally closed infrastructure implementations that bind to Microsoft products only.  A good example is WinFS, I believe in the unified data storage concept, it's a vision that I've believed in for many years, but there is no notion from any PDC presentation or Blog that I have read so far (I aggregate a serious number of feeds) that Microsoft is committed to an architectural strategy that enables 3rd party ISVs to hook their data stores and data sources into this storage infrastructure - it's simply about Yukon (SQL Server) and that's basically it.

WinFS needs to architecturally separate the System Provider from the Data Provider (pretty much the OLE-DB architecture) with Microsoft naturally providing reference System Provider (pretty much what was demonstrated at PDC) and Data Provider (ADO.NET, OLE DB, and ODBC) implementations. Third parties can choose to produce custom WinFS Service or Data Providers which serve their data access needs. It's impractical to want to force every non SQL Server customer over to SQL Server in order them to exploit WinFS, and I certainly hope this isn't the definitive strategy at Microsoft.

Yukon's top 30

Microsoft just made the VSIP program free of charge. Awesome.

[via The Scobleizer Weblog]

Now this is good news from Microsoft! This means that products like Virtuoso can now compete head-on with Yukon (on a level playing field when it arrives) as far as Visual Studio.NET integration goes. Hopefully I will no longer have to rant about any of the following:

1. Missing Data Access Controls and Wizards for ODBC (we already have annbsp interesting Generic ADO.NET Provider en route to GA release)
2. Tightly bound integration between Visual Studio.NET ("Whidbey" or "Orcas")nbspand Yukon (next release of SQL Server), it's up to us (OpenLink) to get the same degree of integration re. Virtuoso (via VSIP), but most importantly Visual Studio's future will not be inextricably linked to Yukon's (let's hope the same applies to IE and Longhorn)

I wonder if the same degree of openness could extend to Web Matrix? That would be something indeed!

Get Ready for Yukon

The next release of SQL Server promises increased developer productivity and reduced DBA workload.

by Roger Jennings June 2003 Issue .NET Magazine

After reading this article I decided to put together a simple comparitive analysis of our existing product and the soon to be released Yukon.

Our Universal Server product called Virtuoso will compete head on with this future release of SQL Server in many regards (.NET CLR hosting, Native XML Types, SQL-XML, XMLA, Web Services etc.), but I am also keen to see what interesting perspectives Microsoft's implementation brings to the table. Here is a summary comparison, note that some of the hyperlinks in the table below actually take you to live functionality demos (for effect these links point to a Linux server, and you can change the machine part of the url from "demo" to "kingsleydemo" to see the equivalent demos on an XP server).