A declarative query language from the W3C for querying structured propositional data (in the form of 3-tuple [triples] or 4-tuple [quads] records) stored in a deductive database (colloquially referred to as triple or quad stores in Semantic Web and Linked Data parlance).
SPARQL is inherently platform independent. Like SQL, the query language and the backend database engine are distinct. Database clients capture SPARQL queries which are then passed on to compliant backend databases.
Like SQL for relational databases, it provides a powerful mechanism for accessing and joining data across one or more data partitions (named graphs identified by IRIs). The aforementioned capability also enables the construction of sophisticated Views, Reports (HTML or those produced in native form by desktop productivity tools), and data streams for other services.
Unlike SQL, SPARQL includes result serialization formats and an HTTP based wire protocol. Thus, the ubiquity and sophistication of HTTP is integral to SPARQL i.e., client side applications (user agents) only need to be able to perform an HTTP GET against a URL en route to exploiting the power of SPARQL.
What follows is a very simple guide for using SPARQL against your own instance of Virtuoso:
Note: the data source URL doesn't even have to be RDF based -- which is where the Virtuoso Sponger Middleware comes into play (download and install the VAD installer package first) since it delivers the following features to Virtuoso's SPARQL engine:
Public SPARQL endpoints are emerging at an ever increasing rate. Thus, we've setup up a DNS lookup service that provides access to a large number of SPARQL endpoints. Of course, this doesn't cover all existing endpoints, so if our endpoint is missing please ping me.
Here are a collection of commands for using DNS-SD to discover SPARQL endpoints:
When trying to understand HTTP based Linked Data, especially if you're well versed in DBMS technology use (User, Power User, Architect, Analyst, DBA, or Programmer) think:
Remember the need for Data Access & Integration technology is the by product of the following realities:
At the current time we have loaded 100% of all the very large data sets from the LOD Cloud. As result, we can start the process of exposing Linked Data virtues in a manner that's palatable to users, developers, and database professionals across the Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 spectrums.
You can use the "Search & Find" or"URI Lookup" or SPARQL endpoint associated with the LOD cloud hosting instance to perform the following tasks:
If you don't want to use the SPARQL based Web Service, or other Linked Data Web oriented APIs for interacting with the LOD cloud programmatically, you can simply use the powerful REST style Web Service that provides URL parameters for performing full text oriented "Search", entity oriented "Find" queries, and faceted navigation over the huge data corpus with results data returned in JSON and XML formats.
Amazon have agreed to add all the LOD Cloud data sets to their existing public data sets collective. Thus, the data sets we are loading will be available in "raw data" (RDF) format on the public data sets page via Named Elastic Block Storage (EBS) Snapshots); meaning, you can make an EC2 AMI (e.g. a Linux, Windows, Solaris) and install an RDF quad or triple store of choice into your AMI, then simply load data from the LOD cloud based on your needs.
In addition to the above, we are also going to offer a Virtuoso 6.0 Cluster Edition based LOD Cloud AMI (as we've already done with DBpedia, MusicBrainz, NeuroCommons, and Bio2Rdf) that will enable you to simply instantiate a personal and service specific edition of Virtuoso with all the LOD data in place and fully tuned for performance and scalability; basically, you will simply press "Instantiate AMI" and a LOD cloud data space, in true Linked Data from, will be at your disposal within minutes (i.e. the time it takes the DB to start).
Work on the migration of the LOD data to EC2 starts this week. Thus, if you are interested in contributing an RDF based data set to the LOD cloud now is the time to get your archive links in place on the (see: ESW Wiki page for LOD Data Sets).
]]>A data access driver/provider that provides conceptual entity oriented access to RDBMS data managed by Virtuoso. Naturally, it also uses Virtuoso's in-built virtual / federated database layer to provide access to ODBC and JDBC accessible RDBMS engines such as: Oracle (7.x to latest), SQL Server (4.2 to latest), Sybase, IBM Informix (5.x to latest), IBM DB2, Ingres (6.x to latest), Progress (7.x to OpenEdge), MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, and others using our ODBC or JDBC bridge drivers.
It delivers an Entity-Attribute-Value + Classes & Relationships model over disparate data sources that are materialized as .NET Entity Framework Objects, which are then consumable via ADO.NET Data Object Services, LINQ for Entities, and other ADO.NET data consumers.
The provider is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 and delivers the same "ease of use" offered by Microsoft's own SQL Server provider, but across Virtuoso, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Informix, Ingres, Progress (OpenEdge), MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, and others. The same benefits also apply uniformly to Entity Frameworks compatibility.
Bearing in mind that Virtuoso is a multi-model (hybrid) data manager, this also implies that you can use .NET Entity Frameworks against all data managed by Virtuoso. Remember, Virtuoso's SQL channel is a conduit to Virtuoso's core; thus, RDF (courtesy of SPASQL as already implemented re. Jena/Sesame/Redland providers), XML, and other data forms stored in Virtuoso also become accessible via .NET's Entity Frameworks.
You can choose which entity oriented data access model works best for you: RDF Linked Data & SPARQL or .NET Entity Frameworks & Entity SQL. Either way, Virtuoso delivers a commercial grade, high-performance, secure, and scalable solution.
Note: When working with external or 3rd party databases, simply use the Virtuoso Conductor to link the external data source into Virtuoso. Once linked, the remote tables will simply be treated as though they are native Virtuoso tables leaving the virtual database engine to handle the rest. This is similar to the role the Microsoft JET engine played in the early days of ODBC, so if you've ever linked an ODBC data source into Microsoft Access, you are ready to do the same using Virtuoso.
Virtuoso is an extremely compact product that is very easy to install. The ease of installation carries over to the PHP runtime when bound to Virtuoso.
]]>Here are some examples of how we distill Entities (People, Places, Music, and other things) from Freebase (X)HTML pages (meaning: we don't have to start from RDF information resources as data sources for the eventual RDF Linked Data we generate):
Tip: Install our OpenLink Data Explorer extension for Firefox. Once installed, simply browse through Freebase, and whenever you encounter a page about something of interest, simply use the following sequences to distill (via the Page Description feature) the entities from the page you are reading:
Here is a look at our offerings by product family:
As you explore the Linked Data graph exposed via our product portfolio, I expect you to experience, or at least spot, the virtuous potential of high SDQ (Serendipitous Discovery Quotient) courtesy of Linked Data, which is Web 3.0's answer to SEO. For instance, how Database, Operating System, and Processor family paths in the product portfolio graph (data network) unveil a lot more about OpenLink Software than meets the proverbial "eye" :-)
]]>Like Apache, Virtuoso is a bona-fide Web Application Server for PHP based applications. Unlike Apache, Virtuoso is also the following:
As result of the above, when you deploy a PHP application using Virtuoso, you inherit the following benefits:
As indicated in prior posts, producing RDF Linked Data from the existing Web, where a lot of content is deployed by PHP based content managers, should simply come down to RDF Views over the SQL Schemas and deployment / publishing of the RDF Views in RDF Linked data form. In a nutshell, this is what Virtuoso delivers via its PHP runtime hosting and pre packaged VADs (Virtuoso Application Distribution packages), for popular PHP based applications such as: phpBB3, Drupal, WordPress, and MediaWiki.
In addition, to the RDF Linked Data deployment, we've also taken the traditional LAMP installation tedium out of the typical PHP application deployment process. For instance, you don't have to rebuild PHP 3.5 (32 or 64 Bit) on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux to get going, simply install Virtuoso, and then select a VAD package for the relevant application and you're set. If the application of choice isn't pre packaged by us, simply install as you would when using Apache, which comes dow to situating the PHP files in your Web structure under the Web Application's root directory.
At the current time, I've only provided links to ZIP files containing the Virtuoso installation "silent movies". This approach is a short-term solution to some of my current movie publishing challenges re. YouTube and Vimeo -- where the compressed output hasn't been of acceptable visual quality. Once resolved, I will publish much more "Multimedia Web" friendly movies :-)
]]>Ubiquity from Mozilla Labs, provides an alternative entry point for experiencing the "Controller" aspect of the Web's natural compatibility with the MVC development pattern. As I've noted (in various posts) Web Services, as practiced by the REST oriented Web 2.0 community or SOAP oriented SOA community within the enterprise, is fundamentally about the ("Controller" aspect of MVC.
Ubiquity provides a commandline interface for direct invocation of Web Services. For instance, in our case, we can expose the Virtuoso's in-built RDF Middleware ("Sponger") and Linked Data deployment services via a single command of the form: describe-resource <url>
To experience this neat addition to Firefox you need to do the following:
Enjoy!
]]>The LinqToRdf project is about binding LINQ to RDF. It sits atop Joshua Tauberer's C# based Semantic Web/RDF library which has been out there for a while and works across Microsoft .NET and it's open source variant "Mono".
Historically, the Semantic Web realm has been dominated by RDF frameworks such as Sesame, Jena and Redland; which by their Open Source orientation, predominantly favor non-Windows platforms (Java and Linux). Conversely, Microsoft's .NET frameworks have sought to offer Conceptualization technology for heterogeneous Logical Data Sources via .NET's Entity Frameworks and ADO.NET, but without any actual bindings to RDF.
Interestingly, believe it or not, .NET already has a data query language that shares a number of similarities with SPARQL, called Entity-SQL, and a very innovative programming language called LINQ; that offers a blend of constructs for natural data access and manipulation across relational (SQL), hierarchical (XML), and graph (Object) models without the traditional object language->database impedance tensions of the past.
With regards to all of the above, we've just released a mini white paper that covers the exploitation of RDF-based Linked Data using .NET via LINQ. The paper offers a an overview of LinqToRdf, plus enhancements we've contributed to the project (available in LinqToRdf v0.8.). The paper includes real-world examples that tap into a MusicBrainz powered Linked Data Space, the Music Ontology, the Virtuoso RDF Quad Store, Virtuoso Sponger Middleware, and our RDfization Cartridges for Musicbrainz.
Enjoy!]]>ODBC identifies data sources using Data Source Names (DSNs).
WODBC (Web Open Database Connectivity) delivers open data access to Web Databases / Data Spaces. The Data Source Naming scheme: URI or IRI, is HTTP based thereby enabling data access by reference via the Web.
ODBC DSNs bind ODBC client applications to Tables, Views, Stored Procedures.
WODBC DSNs bind you to a Data Space (e.g. my FOAF based Profile Page where you can use the "Explore Data Tab" to look around if you are a human visitor) or a specific Entity within a Data Space (i.e Person Entity Me).
ODBC Drivers are built using APIs (DBMS Call Level Interfaces) provided by DBMS vendors. Thus, a DBMS vendor can chose not to release an API, or do so selectivity, for competitive advantage or market disruption purposes (it's happened!).
WODBC Drivers are also built using APIs (Web Services associated with a Web Data Space). These drivers are also referred to as RDF Middleware or RDFizers. The "Web" component of WODBC ensures openness, you publish Data with URIs from your Linked Data Server and that's it; your data space or specific data entities are live and accessible (by reference) over the Web!
So we have come full circle (or cycle), the Web is becoming more of a structured database everyday! What's new is old, and what's old is new!
Data Access is everything, without "Data" there is no information or knowledge. Without "Data" there's not notion of vitality, purpose, or value.
URIs make or break everything in the Linked Data Web just as ODBC DSNs do within the enterprise.
I've deliberately left JDBC, ADO.NET, and OLE-DB out of this piece due to their respective programming languages and frameworks specificity. None of these mechanisms match the platform availability breadth of ODBC.
The Web as a true M-V-C pattern is now crystalizing. The "M" (Model) component of M-V-C is finally rising to the realm of broad attention courtesy of the "Linked Data" meme and "Semantic Web" vision.
By the way, M-V-C lines up nicely with Web 1.0 (Web Forms / Pages), Web 2.0 (Web Services based APIs), and Web 3.0 (Data Web, Web of Data, or Linked Data Web) :-)
]]>In this third take on my introduction to the Data Web I would like to share a link with you (a Dynamic Start Page in Web 2.0 parlance) with a Data Web twist: You do not have to preset the Start Page Data Sources (this is a small-big thing, if you get my drift, hopefully!).
Here are some Data Web based Dynamic Start Pages that I have built for some key play ers from the Semantic Web realm (in random order):
"These are RDF prepped Data Sources....", you might be thinking, right? Well here is the reminder: The Data Web is a Global Data Generation and Integration Effort. Participation may be active (Semantic Web & Microformats Community), or passive (web sites, weblogs, wikis, shared bookmarks, feed subscription, discussion forums, mailing lists etc..). Irrespective of participation mode, RDF instance can be generated from close to anything (I say this because I plan to add binary files holding metadata to this mix shortly). Here are examples of Dynamic Start Pages for non RDF Data Sources:
what about Microformats you may be wondering? Here goes:
Let's carry on.
How about some traditional Web Sites? Here goes:
And before I forget, here is My Data Web Start Page .
Due to the use of Ajax in the Data Web Start Pages, IE6 and Safari will not work. For Mac OS X users, Webkit works fine. Ditto re. IE7 on Windows.
]]>XMP and microformats revisited: "
Yesterday I exercised poetic license when I suggested that Adobeâs Extensible metadata platform (XMP) was not only the spiritual cousin of microformats like hCalendar but also, perhaps, more likely to see widespread use in the near term. My poetic license was revoked, though, in a couple of comments:
Mike Linksvayer: How someone as massively clued-in as Jon Udell could be so misled as to describe XMP as a microformat is beyond me.
Danny Ayers: Like Mike I donât really understand Jonâs references to microformats - I first assumed he meant XMP could be replaced with a uF.
Actually, Iâm serious about this. If I step back and ask myself what are the essential qualities of a microformat, itâs a short list:
Mike notes:
XMP is embedded in a binary file, completely opaque to nearly all users; microformats put a premium on (practically require) colocation of metadata with human-visible HTML.
Yes, I understand. And as someone who is composing this blog entry as XHTML, in emacs, using a semantic CSS tag that will enable me to search for quotes by Mike Linksvayer and find the above fragment, Iâm obviously all about metadata coexisting with human-readable HTML. And Iâve been applying this technique since long before I ever heard the term microformats â my own term was originally microcontent.
(Via Jon Udell.)
I believe Jon is acknowledging the fact that the propagation of metadata in "Binary based" Web data sources is no different to the microformats based propagation that is currently underway in full swing across the "Text based" Web data sources realm. He is reiterating the fact that the Web is self-annotating (exponentially) by way of Metadata Embedding. And yes, what he describes is a similar to Microformats in substance and propagation style :-)
Here is what I believe Jon is hoping to see:
My little "Hello Data Web!" meme was about demonstrating a view that Danny has sought for a while: unobtrusive meshing of microformats and RDF via GRDDL and SPARQL binding that simply eliminates the often perceived "RDF Tax". Danny, Jon, myself, and many others have always understood that making the Data Web (Web of RDF Instance Data) more of a Force (Star Wars style) is the key to unravelling the power of the "Web as a Database". Of course, we also tend the describe our nirvana in different ways that sometimes obscures the fundamental commonality of vision that we all share.
Personally, I believe everyone should simply "feel the force" or observe "the bright and dark sides of the force" that is RDF. When this occurs en masse there will be a global epiphany (similar to what happened around the time of the initial unveiling of the Web of Hypertext). Jon's meme brings the often overlooked realm of binary based metadata sources into the general discourse.
JBinary Files as bona fide Data Web URIs (i.e. Metadata Sources) is much closer than you think :-) I should have my "Hello Data Web of Binary Data Sources" unveiled very soon!
A quick FYI:
Virtuoso has offered a DBMS hosted Filesystem via WebDAV for a number of years, but the implications of this functionality have remained unclear for just as long. Thus, we developed (a few years ago) and released (recently) an application layer above Virtuoso's WebDAV storage realm called: “The OpenLink Briefcase” (nee. oDrive). This application allows you to view items uploaded by content type and/or kind (People, Business Cards, Calendars, Business Reports, Office Documents, Photos, Blog Posts, Feed Channels/Subscriptions, Bookmarks etc..). it also includes automatic metadata extraction (where feasible) and indexing. Naturally, as an integral part of our “OpenLink Data Spaces” (ODS) product offering, it supports GData, URIQA, SPARQL (note: WebDAV metadata is sync'ed with Virtuoso's RDF Triplestore), SQL, and WebDAV itself.
You can explore the power of this product via the following routes:
With the above in mind (years of getting into trouble during OS installation and usage etc.. I expected the very worst when attempting to get Solaris 10, Linux (Debian), FreeBSD 6.x, and Windows XP installed on a Mac Mini such that I could have all of these operating systems at my disposal without quad-booting. To my utter disbelief (I am still trying to recover from the immense euphoria..) Parallels delivered to me the absolute simplest installation and usage experience across all said operating systems that I have ever experienced.
I now have a MacIntel Mac Mini (one of several that I will be stocking up on while I wait the Microsoft Universal Binary port of Office) that delivers me the long sought nirvana of having Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, Windows XP, and Mac OS X on a single desktop!
If you want to enjoy one of the genuine innovations of our time, simply make parallels an integral part of your Mac OS X experience (whether you are an end-user, developer, administrator, or systems integrator).
]]>Parallels Desktop Release Candidate 2, uh, released: "
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Get your mice clicking ladies and gentlemen, as Parallels has offered up the final test version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, their virtualization software that allows you to run almost any OS right within Mac OS X. With this version, however, Parallels has increased the app's final price to $79.99, as they have incorporated their Compressor Server tool (due to user feedback) into the software package for streamlining and optimizing your virtual machines and the amount of disk space they occupy. The beta testing pre-order price of $39.99 is still in place, and probably more appetizing than ever. Other new features and improvements in the Release Candidate 2 include:
Also note that if you download this newest release, you must re-install the Parallels Tools for guest Windows installations (NT/2000/XP/2003). As with previous beta releases, this download is free before the software package goes official.
- Significantly improved performance
- Improved USB performance and broader device support
- Improved Host-guest networking
- Automatic network adapters now switch on-the-fly
- Guest OS no longer steals host IP address in some DHCP servers
- Fullscreen mode is now customizable
- Integration with Virtue is now bug-free
- Customizable Ctrl + Click mapping
- Guest 32bit color is supported when Parallels Tools is installed
- Improved Shared folders performance
- Resolved shared folders/MS Office incompatibility issues
- Windows 98 no longer consumes 99% host CPU even when idle (in VT-x mode)
"
I added the missing piece regarding the "Virtuoso Conductor" (the Web based Admin UI for Virtuoso) to the original post below. I also added a link to our live SPARQL Demo so that anyone interested can start playing around with SPARQL and SPARQL integrated into SQL right away.
Another good thing about this post is the vast amount of valuable links that it contains. To really appreciate this point simply visit my Linkblog (excuse the current layout :-) - a Tab if you come in via the front door of this Data Space (what I used to call My Weblog Home Page).
]]>"Free" Databases: Express vs. Open-Source RDBMSs: "Open-source relational database management systems (RDBMSs) are gaining IT mindshare at a rapid pace. As an example, BusinessWeek's February 6, 2006 ' Taking On the Database Giants ' article asks 'Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft?' and then provides the answer: 'It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives.'
There's no shortage of open-source alternatives to look at. The BusinessWeek article concentrates on MySQL, which BW says 'is trying to be the Ikea of the database world: cheap, needs some assembly, but has a sleek, modern design and does the job.' The article also discusses Postgre[SQL] and Ingres, as well as EnterpriseDB, an Oracle clone created from PostgreSQL code*. Sun includes PostgreSQL with Solaris 10 and, as of April 6, 2006, with Solaris Express.**
*Frank Batten, Jr., the investor who originally funded Red Hat, invested a reported $16 million into Great Bridge with the hope of making a business out of providing paid support to PostgreSQL users. Great Bridge stayed in business only 18 months , having missed an opportunity to sell the business to Red Hat and finding that selling $50,000-per-year support packages for an open-source database wasn't easy. As Batten concluded, 'We could not get customers to pay us big dollars for support contracts.' Perhaps EnterpriseDB will be more successful with a choice of $5,000, $3,000, or $1,000 annual support subscriptions .
**Interestingly, Oracle announced in November 2005 that Solaris 10 is 'its preferred development and deployment platform for most x64 architectures, including x64 (x86, 64-bit) AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processor-based systems and Sun's UltraSPARC(R)-based systems.'
There is a surfeit of reviews of current MySQL, PostgreSQL andâto a lesser extentâIngres implementations. These three open-source RDBMSs come with their own or third-party management tools. These systems compete against free versions of commercial (proprietary) databases: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (and its MSDE 2000 and 1.0 predecessors), Oracle Database 10g Express Edition, IBM DB2 Express-C, and Sybase ASE Express Edition for Linux where database size and processor count limitations aren't important. Click here for a summary of recent InfoWorld reviews of the full versions of these four databases plus MySQL, which should be valid for Express editions also. The FTPOnline Special Report article, 'Microsoft SQL Server Turns 17,' that contains the preceding table is here (requires registration.)
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP-1 Advanced Features
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Features enhances SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (SQL Express or SSX) dramatically, so it deserves special treatment here. SQL Express gains full text indexing and now supports SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) on the local SSX instance. The SP-1 with Advanced Features setup package, which Microsoft released on April 18, 2006, installs the release version of SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) and the full version of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) for designing and editing SSRS reports. My 'Install SP-1 for SQL Server 2005 and Express' article for FTPOnline's SQL Server Special Report provides detailed, illustrated installation instructions for and related information about the release version of SP-1. SP-1 makes SSX the most capable of all currently available Express editions of commercial RDBMSs for Windows.
OpenLink Software's Virtuoso Open-Source Edition
OpenLink Software announced an open-source version of it's Virtuoso Universal Server commercial DBMS on April 11, 2006. On the initial date of this post, May 2, 2006, Virtuoso Open-Source Edition (VOS) was virtually under the radar as an open-source product. According to this press release, the new edition includes:VOS only lacks the virtual server and replication features that are offered by the commercial edition. VOS includes a Web-based administration tool called the "Virtuoso Conductor" According to Kingsley Idehen's Weblog, 'The Virtuoso build scripts have been successfully tested on Mac OS X (Universal Binary Target), Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris (AIX, HP-UX, and True64 UNIX will follow soon). A Windows Visual Studio project file is also in the works (ETA some time this week).'
- SPARQL compliant RDF Triple Store
- SQL-200n Object-Relational Database Engine (SQL, XML, and Free Text)
- Integrated BPEL Server and Enterprise Service Bus
- WebDAV and Native File Server
- Web Application Server that supports PHP, Perl, Python, ASP.NET, JSP, etc.
- Runtime Hosting for Microsoft .NET, Mono, and Java
InfoWorld's Jon Udell has tracked Virtuoso's progress since 2002, with an additional article in 2003 and a one-hour podcast with Kingsley Idehen on April 26, 2006. A major talking point for Virtuoso is its support for Atom 0.3 syndication and publication, Atom 1.0 syndication and (forthcoming) publication, and future support for Google's GData protocol, as mentioned in this Idehen post. Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny points out that the 'fingerprints' of Adam Bosworth, Google's VP of Engineering and the primary force behind the development of Microsoft Access, 'are all over GData.' Click here to display a list of all OakLeaf posts that mention Adam Bosworth.
One application for the GData protocol is querying and updating the Google Base database independently of the Google Web client, as mentioned by Jeremy: 'It's not about building an easier onramp to Google Base. ... Well, it is. But, again, that's the small stuff.' Click here for a list of posts about my experiences with Google Base. Watch for a future OakLeaf post on the subject as the GData APIs gain ground.
Open-Source and Free Embedded Database Contenders
Open-source and free embedded SQL databases are gaining importance as the number and types of mobile devices and OSs proliferate. Embedded databases usually consist of Java classes or Windows DLLs that are designed to minimize file size and memory consumption. Embedded databases avoid the installation hassles, heavy resource usage and maintenance cost associated with client/server RDBMSs that run as an operating system service.
Andrew Hudson's December 2005 'Open Source databases rounded up and rodeoed' review for The Enquirer provides brief descriptions of one commercial and eight open source database purveyors/products: Sleepycat, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, InnoBase, Firebird, IBM Cloudscape (a.k.a, Derby), Genezzo, and Oracle. Oracle Sleepycat* isn't an SQL Database, Oracle InnoDB* is an OEM database engine that's used by MySQL, and Genezzo is a multi-user, multi-server distributed database engine written in Perl. These special-purpose databases are beyond the scope of this post.
* Oracle purchased Sleepycat Software, Inc. in February 2006 and purchased Innobase OY in October 2005 . The press release states: 'Oracle intends to continue developing the InnoDB technology and expand our commitment to open source software.'
Derby is an open-source release by the Apache Software Foundation of the Cloudscape Java-based database that IBM acquired when it bought Informix in 2001. IBM offers a commercial release of Derby as IBM Cloudscape 10.1. Derby is a Java class library that has a relatively light footprint (2 MB), which make it suitable for client/server synchronization with the IBM DB2 Everyplace Sync Server in mobile applications. The IBM DB2 Everyplace Express Edition isn't open source or free*, so it doesn't qualify for this post. The same is true for the corresponding Sybase SQL Anywhere components.**
* IBM DB2 Everyplace Express Edition with synchronization costs $379 per server (up to two processors) and $79 per user. DB2 Everyplace Database Edition (without DB2 synchronization) is $49 per user. (Prices are based on those when IBM announced version 8 in November 2003.)
** Sybase's iAnywhere subsidiary calls SQL Anywhere 'the industry's leading mobile database.' A Sybase SQL Anywhere Personal DB seat license with synchronization to SQL Anywhere Server is $119; the cost without synchronization wasn't available from the Sybase Web site. Sybase SQL Anywhere and IBM DB2 Everyplace perform similar replication functions.
Sun's Java DB, another commercial version of Derby, comes with the Solaris Enterprise Edition, which bundles Solaris 10, the Java Enterprise System, developer tools, desktop infrastructure and N1 management software. A recent Between the Lines blog entry by ZDNet's David Berlind waxes enthusiastic over the use of Java DB embedded in a browser to provide offline persistence. RedMonk analyst James Governor and eWeek's Lisa Vaas wrote about the use of Java DB as a local data store when Tim Bray announced Sun's Derby derivative and Francois Orsini demonstrated Java DB embedded in the Firefox browser at the ApacheCon 2005 conference.
Firebird is derived from Borland's InterBase 6.0 code, the first commercial relational database management system (RDBMS) to be released as open source. Firebird has excellent support for SQL-92 and comes in three versions: Classic, SuperServer and Embedded for Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, FreeBSD and MacOS X. The embedded version has a 1.4-MB footprint. Release Candidate 1 for Firebird 2.0 became available on March 30, 2006 and is a major improvement over earlier versions. Borland continues to promote InterBase, now at version 7.5, as a small-footprint, embedded database with commercial Server and Client licenses.
SQLite is a featherweight C library for an embedded database that implements most SQL-92 entry- and transitional-level requirements (some through the JDBC driver) and supports transactions within a tiny 250-KB code footprint. Wrappers support a multitude of languages and operating systems, including Windows CE, SmartPhone, Windows Mobile, and Win32. SQLite's primary SQL-92 limitations are lack of nested transactions, inability to alter a table design once committed (other than with RENAME TABLE and ADD COLUMN operations), and foreign-key constraints. SQLite provides read-only views, triggers, and 256-bit encryption of database files. A downside is the the entire database file is locked when while a transaction is in progress. SQLite uses file access permissions in lieu of GRANT and REVOKE commands. Using SQLite involves no license; its code is entirely in the public domain.The Mozilla Foundation's Unified Storage wiki says this about SQLite: 'SQLite will be the back end for the unified store [for Firefox]. Because it implements a SQL engine, we get querying 'for free', without having to invent our own query language or query execution system. Its code-size footprint is moderate (250k), but it will hopefully simplify much existing code so that the net code-size change should be smaller. It has exceptional performance, and supports concurrent access to the database. Finally, it is released into the public domain, meaning that we will have no licensing issues.'
Vieka Technology, Inc.'s eSQL 2.11 is a port of SQLite to Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smartphone) and Win32, and includes development tools for Windows devices and PCs, as well as a .NET native data provider. A conventional ODBC driver also is available. eSQL for Windows (Win32) is free for personal and commercial use; eSQL for Windows Mobile requires a license for commercial (for-profit or business) use.
HSQLDB isn't on most reviewers' radar, which is surprising because it's the default database for OpenOffice.org (OOo) 2.0's Base suite member. HSQLDB 1.8.0.1 is an open-source (BSD license) Java dembedded database engine based on Thomas Mueller's original Hypersonic SQL Project. Using OOo's Base feature requires installing the Java 2.0 Runtime Engine (which is not open-source) or the presence of an alternative open-source engine, such as Kaffe. My prior posts about OOo Base and HSQLDB are here, here and here.
The HSQLDB 1.8.0 documentation on SourceForge states the following regarding SQL-92 and later conformance:
Other less well-known embedded databases designed for or suited to mobile deployment are Mimer SQL Mobile and VistaDB 2.1 . Neither product is open-source and require paid licensing; VistaDB requires a small up-front payment by developers but offers royalty-free distribution.HSQLDB 1.8.0 supports the dialect of SQL defined by SQL standards 92, 99 and 2003. This means where a feature of the standard is supported, e.g. left outer join, the syntax is that specified by the standard text. Many features of SQL92 and 99 up to Advanced Level are supported and here is support for most of SQL 2003 Foundation and several optional features of this standard. However, certain features of the Standards are not supported so no claim is made for full support of any level of the standards.
Java DB, Firebird embedded, SQLite and eSQL 2.11 are contenders for lightweight PC and mobile device database projects that aren't Windows-only.
SQL Server 2005 Everywhere
If you're a Windows developer, SQL Server Mobile is the logical embedded database choice for mobile applications for Pocket PCs and Smartphones. Microsoft's April 19, 2006 press release delivered the news that SQL Server 2005 Mobile Editon (SQL Mobile or SSM) would gain a big brotherâSQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition.
Currently, the SSM client is licensed (at no charge) to run in production on devices with Windows CE 5.0, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC or Windows Mobile 5.0, or on PCs with Windows XP Tablet Edition only. SSM also is licensed for development purposes on PCs running Visual Studio 2005. Smart Device replication with SQL Server 2000 SP3 and later databases has been the most common application so far for SSM.
By the end of 2006, Microsoft will license SSE for use on all PCs running any Win32 version or the preceding device OSs. A version of SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE)âupdated to support SSEâis expected to release by the end of the year. These features will qualify SSE as the universal embedded database for Windows client and smart-device applications.
For more details on SSE, read John Galloway's April 11, 2006 blog post and my 'SQL Server 2005 Mobile Goes Everywhere' article for the FTPOnline Special Report on SQL Server."(Via OakLeaf Systems.)
The engineers bring computers and the software programs they are working on and literally plug them together to see how their programs interoperate. “We work around the clock for a week. We torture our machines in the pursuit of interoperability,” he told a rapt courtroom.
“Can you do this test with Microsoft?” Judge Cooke asked.
“Yes, but they don’t turn up,” Tridgell said.
In an interview after the court had adjourned for the day, Tridgell explained that for the past six years Microsoft has boycotted the event.
“They used to come. It used to be held in Seattle, close to Microsoft’s headquarters,” he said.
But the software giant turned its back on the rest of the software community in the late 1990s once it had developed a server operating system it believed it could corner the market with. This marked a turning point for the software industry, Tridgell said. He spoke nostalgically about the days before Microsoft went its separate way. “It’s not like it used to be. I’d like it to get back to that,” he said.
The market for workgroup server operating systems lies at the heart of the European Commission’s antitrust decision against Microsoft. Sun Microsystems Inc., a player in this market, complained to the European competition regulator in 1998 that Microsoft was competing unfairly. That complaint sparked the five year-long antitrust investigation.
To remedy the situation, the Commission ordered Microsoft to divulge interoperability protocols within its own Windows workgroup server operating system. With this information, rival server systems should be able to communicate as fluently with Windows on PCs as Microsoft’s own server system.
Two years on from the historic antitrust ruling, the Commission contends that Microsoft still hasn’t provided the necessary information, and the Commission is poised to issue a new antitrust ruling against the company for failing to comply with its 2004 decision.
Even if Microsoft does comply, it isn’t certain that Tridgell and others from the free and open source sides of the software community will be granted access to the information.
At the time of the antitrust ruling, Microsoft said the remedy proposed by the then competition commissioner, Mario Monti, would result in its valuable intellectual property being given away if it fell into the hands of open source developers.
Andrew's testimony reflects an experience familiar to many ISV's that worked closely with Microsoft in the "early to mid 90's". In our case, the technology was ODBC (Open Database Connectivity). The cost of achieving ODBC compliance and interoperability grew exponentially as Microsoft veered towards a platform and database specific monoculture.
]]>A powerful next generation server product that implements otherwise distinct server functionality within a single server product. Think of Virtuoso as the server software analog of a dual core processor where each core represents a traditional server functionality realm.
The Virtuoso History page tells the whole story.
90% of the aforementioned functionality has been available in Virtuoso since 2000 with the RDF Triple Store being the only 2006 item.
The Virtuoso build scripts have been successfully tested on Mac OS X (Universal Binary Target), Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris (AIX, HP-UX, and True64 UNIX will follow soon). A Windows Visual Studio project file is also in the works (ETA some time this week).
Simple, there is no value in a product of this magnitude remaining the "best kept secret". That status works well for our competitors, but absolutely works against the legions of new generation developers, systems integrators, and knowledge workers that need to be aware of what is actually achievable today with the right server architecture.
GPL version 2.
Dual licensing.
The Open Source version of Virtuoso includes all of the functionality listed above. While the Virtual Database (distributed heterogeneous join engine) and Replication Engine (across heterogeneous data sources) functionality will only be available in the commercial version.
On SourceForge.
Of course!
Up until this point, the Virtuoso Product Blog has been a covert live demonstration of some aspects of Virtuoso (Content Management). My Personal Blog and the Virtuoso Product Blog are actual Virtuoso instances, and have been so since I started blogging in 2003.
Is There a product Wiki?
Sure! The Virtuoso Product Wiki is also an instance of Virtuoso demonstrating another aspect of the Content Management prowess of Virtuoso.
Yep! Virtuoso Online Documentation is hosted via yet another Virtuoso instance. This particular instance also attempts to demonstrate Free Text search combined with the ability to repurpose well formed content in a myriad of forms (Atom, RSS, RDF, OPML, and OCS).
The Virtuoso Online Tutorial Site has operated as a live demonstration and tutorial portal for a numbers of years. During the same timeframe (circa. 2001) we also assembled a few Screencast style demos (their look feel certainly show their age; updates are in the works).
BTW - We have also updated the Virtuoso FAQ and also released a number of missing Virtuoso White Papers (amongst many long overdue action items).
]]>Apple has today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. It will be a part of Mac OS X 10.5 (‘Leopard’) whenever the next major update of Mac OS X arrives (probably in early 2007). Leopard will be previewed this August at the... [ read more ]
"(Via Macsimum News.)
]]>WinXP and OSX dual boot in MacBook Pro: "
Finally Iâve succeeded in installing Windows XP in MacBook Pro. Now it can dual boot between Windows XP and MacOS X. Thereâre few issues with windows xp but being able to boot smoothly between these 2 OSes are really amazing. Iâve followed this HOWTO where more and more information is being added every few hours. I think most of the minor problems will be solved soon. If you want to install it for your self or want more information this wiki is the best place to go. Here Iâm posting the photos of major installation sequence and some problems I encountered.
Installation
1. Downloaded winxponmac0.1.zip
Windows XP Pro CD that came with my Samsung Notebook is SP1 but the patch works only with SP2. So this is what I did:
2. Downloaded WinXP SP2 separately.
3. Used the free tool nLite to integrate the WinXP SP2 with the XP Pro CD (SP1) and created the WinXP SP2 CD source.
4. Then followed Step-by-step-instruction
5. Started Windows XP installation.
6. I encountered a problem with the partition listing. I was presented with following options.
According to the guide the correct option should be as following:
If you choose the Partition2 then youâll get follwing error:
7. To solve the above problem I selected the first 'unpartitioned space,' then pressed 'C' to create a new partition. As described in this solution. After this things went smoothly.
8. Finally itâs installed
9. System Properties
10. Device Manager with unrecognized devices.
11. Downloaded the drivers from here. Ethernet works fine. Wireless doesnât work. If I press restart it will shutdown.
12. Browsing my blog.
13. Boot Choice: Mac OSX
14. Boot Choice: Windows XP
Now thereâre few driver issues Iâm quite sure theyâll be solved soon.
" ]]>(Via The OSx86 Project.)
]]>It's possible, even likely that Microsoft's RSS technology will be the most-installed, and their influence on the future of the format will be considerable, and it concerns me that at some point they may throw their weight around like Apple is (I think it's pretty likely they will, if not this year, then next year, or the year after that).
But none of that means that I can't find enough users for my aggregator, and you for yours, to be able to continue development and influence the market, because we don't have to convince the editors of PC Mag and PC Week that our products matter. When the big dinosaurs, Microsoft, Lotus and Ashton-Tate, and later Borland, wanted our market, the publications had little choice but to give it to them. Now I am a publication myself. I can communicate directly with users. That changes everything.
But even back then, if their product wasn't up to the job, their attempts to take the market often failed. I remember when the CEO of a very large software company came to me as a friend (hah) and said I should get out of his way because he was going to take my market. His product was inadequate, and it didn't work. He tried again, and again it didn't work. And again, and again. And my product was still standing. So even in the 80s, size wasn't enough to get you a market.
Microsoft took spreadsheets by being much better than Lotus on the Mac. Word emerged from the flock of word processors by being the first to make it to Windows in a usable fashion. Adam, I don't have to tell you how dBASE fell to Fox. I don't think they would have overcome any of their competitors back in the 80s, if their product had been as weak as their aggregator product is today. Same thing is true, by the way, in their competition with Netscape. Microsoft's browser probably would have won on its merits, they didn't need to use anti-competitive tactics, their product was better enough, and their development methodology strong, they would would have won anyway, imho. (And so I argued, even pleaded, at the time.)
On the other hand, the aggregator developers could sure use some competition! In the last four years there really hasn't been very much improvement, in fact I think in many ways we've lost capabilities that we once had. Maybe a little pressure from a BigCo will separate the winners from the losers in this space, and we can start thinking about a market that is, instead of a market that will be."
(Via Scripting News.)
The points made by Dave extend across all industries. The Internet and resultant "network effects" (exemplified by the Blogosphere amongst others) collectively close the door on size as the key determinant of commercial success. "Size" is an artifact of the "Industrial Age". We are now well in the throws of the "Information Age".
]]>(Spotter: Digg) .
Related Commentary: The emerging view is that EFI is a subtle mechanism for locking out Windows (since it doesn't support EFI in its x86 versions. And when it does, it only applies to the IA64 variants). Well, Linux handles EFI, and I assume that VMWare and others more than likely grok this already. Thus, we can hope that OS Virtualization players are getting revved up to provide even clearer justification for their existence by opening the gates to this Nirvana!
]]>Answer: NO.
Comparing Web 2.0 to Windows is like comparing Apples and Oranges!
The Internet displaced Windows (long time ago!). The effect of this reality is simply working its way through Geoffrey Moore's Bell Curve - in "left to right" fashion. By the way, there isn't a single thing Microsoft can do about this beyond accepting this reality and gearing itself up to compete as best it can in this new reality.
The Internet is the Operating System for the New Computer - aptly coined: "The Network" by Sun years ago (unfortunately a blind preoccupation with Java has completely obscured Sun's fundamental vision regarding this matter).
Web 2.0 provides the Windows API equivalent for the InternetOS.
The real message in today's well publicized memos from Bill and Ray is a realization on the part of Microsoft that they can no longer bet the house on Windows; Integrated Innovation will no longer imply: covert ways of locking unsuspecting customers and partners into Windows. In short, Microsoft is wrestling with its Local Max. ]]>Quick Example using my blog:
Digest the rest of Dare's post:
Clone the Google APIs: Kill That Noise: "
Yesterday Dave Winer wrote in a post about cloning the Google API Dave Winer wrote
Let's make the Google API an open standard. Back in 2002, Google took a bold first step to enable open architecture search engines, by creating an API that allowed developers to build applications on top of their search engine. However, there were severe limits on the capacity of these applications. So we got a good demo of what might be, now three years later, it's time for the real thing.and earlier thatIf you didn't get a chance to hear yesterday's podcast, it recommends that Microsoft clone the Google API for search, without the keys, and without the limits. When a developer's application generates a lot of traffic, buy him a plane ticket and dinner, and ask how you both can make some money off their excellent booming application of search. This is something Google can't do, because search is their cash cow. That's why Microsoft should do it. And so should Yahoo. Also, there's no doubt Google will be competing with Apple soon, so they should be also thinking about ways to devalue Google's advantage.This doesn't seem like a great idea to me for a wide variety of reasons but first, let's start with a history lesson before I tackle this specific issue
A Trip Down Memory Lane
This history lessonused to be inis in a post entitled The Tragedy of the API by Evan Williamsbut seems to be gone now. Anyway, back in the early days of blogging the folks at Pyra [which eventually got bought by Google] created the Blogger API for their service. Since Blogspot/Blogger was a popular service, a the number of applications that used the API quickly grew. At this point Dave Winer decided that since the Blogger API was so popular he should implement it in his weblogging tools but then he decided that he didn't like some aspects of it such as application keys (sound familiar?) and did without them in his version of the API. Dave Winer's version of the Blogger API became the MetaWeblog API. These APIs became de facto standards and a number of other weblogging applications implemented them.After a while, the folks at Pyra decided that their API needed to evolve due to various flaws in its design. As Diego Doval put it in his post a review of blogging APIs, The Blogger API is a joke, and a bad one at that. This lead to the creation of the Blogger API 2.0. At this point a heated debate erupted online where Dave Winer berated the Blogger folks for deviating from an industry standard. The irony of flaming a company for coming up with a v2 of their own API seemed to be lost on many of the people who participated in the debate. Eventually the Blogger API 2.0 went nowhere.
Today the blogging API world is a few de facto standards based on a hacky API created by a startup a few years ago, a number of site specific APIs (LiveJournal API, MovableType API, etc) and a number of inconsistently implemented versions of the Atom API.
On Cloning the Google Search API
To me the most salient point in the hijacking of the Blogger API from Pyra is that it didn't change the popularity of their service or even make Radio Userland (Dave Winer's product) catch up to them in popularity. This is important to note since this is Dave Winer's key argument for Microsoft cloning the Google API.Off the top of my head, here are my top three technical reasons for Microsoft to ignore the calls to clone the Google Search APIs
Difference in Feature Set: The features exposed by the API do not run the entire gamut of features that other search engines may want to expose. Thus even if you implement something that looks a lot like the Google API, you'd have to extend it to add the functionality that it doesn't provide. For example, compare the features provided by the Google API to the features provided by the Yahoo! search API. I can count about half a dozen features in the Yahoo! API that aren't in the Google API.
Difference in Technology Choice: The Google API uses SOAP. This to me is a phenomenally bad technical decision because it raises the bar to performing a basic operation (data retrieval) by using a complex technology. I much prefer Yahoo!'s approach of providing a RESTful API and
MSNWindows Live Search's approach of providing RSS search feeds and a SOAP API for the folks who need such overkill.- Unreasonable Demands: A number of Dave Winer's demands seem contradictory. He asks companies to not require application keys but then advises them to contact application developers who've built high traffic applications about revenue sharing. Exactly how are these applications to be identified without some sort of application ID? As for removing the limits on the services? I guess Dave is ignoring the fact that providing services costs money, which I seem to remember is why he sold weblogs.com to Verisign for a few million dollars. I do agree that some of the limits on existing search APIs aren't terribly useful. The Google API limit of 1000 queries a day seems to guarantee that you won't be able to power a popular application with the service.
Lack of Innovation: Copying Google sucks.
"...Also today I came across the latest project of a man who wants to tear down Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web and replace it with his own vision. It used to be known as Xanadu, but has since morphed into Transliterature, A Humanist Design. I am of course referring to Ted Nelson, who invented the term 'hypertext' in 1965 and is generally regarded as a computing pioneer.
Ted Nelson recently wrote an essay about 'Indirect Documents', which got Slashdotted today. In the essay Nelson outlines why (in his opinion) the Xanadu project failed and he explains his new vision for Transliterature. He takes a number of potshots at Tim Berners-Lee's WWW on the way, e.g.:
'Why don't I like the web? I hate its flapping and screeching and emphasis on appearance; its paper-simulation rectangles of Valuable Real Estate, artifically created by the NCSA browser, now hired out to advertisers; its hierarchies exposed and imposed; its untyped one-way links only from inside the document. (The one-way links hidden under text were a regrettable simplification of hypertext which I assented to in '68 on the HES project. But that's another story.) Only trivial links are possible; there is nothing to support careful annotation and study; and, of course, there is no transclusion.'
Ted Nelson is certainly an original and I'm glad he's still around to throw spanners in the works. I've written about him before and I'm sure I will again, Web 2.0 or not.
"(Excerpted From: Read/Write Web.)
My thoughts on the commentary above:
There is nothing fundamentally incompatible between Ted Nelson's pursuits and future incarnation's of the Web. None whatsoever -- we are simply working our way through an process. The process in question is what I call "standards driven ubiquity" (becoming de facto at Internet Speed). Remember Sun's "The Network is the Computer" vision? Well, without a "Computer" in mind-space you can't think in terms of "Operating Systems". Thats all changing, because today we are gradually beginning to accept the imminent reality that "The Internet is the Operating System" and not Windows/UNIX/Mac OS X/Others. Ahem! And after the Operating System what comes next? I think a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and I think we know what that is (in all of its controversial glory), the very thing we refer to as Web 2.0 (the APIs for the Internet Operating System).
Note: In addition to the Computer, Operating System, and Application Programming Interfaces, we also have those frequently misunderstood and under-appreciated workhorses called "Databases" in place (but we still call them Web Sites for now). And by the way, "Internet Filesystem" has been there forever, but for some reason we can't see WebDAV in all its current and future glory (that will change very soon also!).
Ted and TBL are cool with each (whether they know it or not)! I see no mutual exclusivity in their collective visions (IMHO) :-)
]]>Anyway, Marc's article is a very refreshing read because it provides a really good insight into the general landscape of a rapidly evolving Web alongside genuine appreciation of our broader timeless pursuit of "Openness".
To really help this document provide additional value have scrapped the content of the original post and dumped it below so that we can appreciate the value of the links embedded within the article (note: thanks to Virtuoso I only had to paste the content into my blog, the extraction to my Linkblog and Blog Summary Pages are simply features of my Virtuoso based Blog Engine):
]]>Breaking the Web Wide Open! (complete story)
Even the web giants like AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo need to observe these open standards, or they'll risk becoming the "walled gardens" of the new web and be coolio no more.
Editorial Note: Several months ago, AlwaysOn got a personal invitation from Yahoo founder Jerry Yang "to see and give us feedback on our new social media product, y!360." We were happy to oblige and dutifully showed up, joining a conference room full of hard-core bloggers and new, new media types. The geeks gave Yahoo 360 an overwhelming thumbs down, with comments like, "So the only services I can use within this new network are Yahoo services? What if I don't use Yahoo IM?" In essence, the Yahoo team was booed for being "closed web," and we heartily agreed. With Yahoo 360, Yahoo continues building its own "walled garden" to control its 135 million customersÂan accusation also hurled at AOL in the early 1990s, before AOL migrated its private network service onto the web. As the Economist recently noted, "Yahoo, in short, has old media plans for the new-media era."
The irony to our view here is, of course, that today's AO Network is also a "closed web." In the end, Mr. Yang's thoughtful invitation and our ensuing disappointment in his new service led to the assignment of this article. It also confirmed our existing plan to completely revamp the AO Network around open standards. To tie it all together, we recruited the chief architect of our new site, the notorious Marc Canter, to pen this piece. We look forward to our reader feedback.
Breaking the Web Wide Open!
By Marc Canter
For decades, "walled gardens" of proprietary standards and content have been the strategy of dominant players in mainframe computer software, wireless telecommunications services, and the World Wide WebÂit was their successful lock-in strategy of keeping their customers theirs. But like it or not, those walls are tumbling down. Open web standards are being adopted so widely, with such value and impact, that the web giantsÂAmazon, AOL, eBay, Google, Microsoft, and YahooÂare facing the difficult decision of opening up to what they don't control.
The online world is evolving into a new open web (sometimes called the Web 2.0), which is all about being personalized and customized for each user. Not only open source software, but open standards are becoming an essential component.
Many of the web giants have been using open source software for years. Most of them use at least parts of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP) stack, even if they aren't well-known for giving back to the open source community. For these incumbents that grew big on proprietary web services, the methods, practices, and applications of open source software development are difficult to fully adopt. And the next open source movementsÂwhich will be as much about open standards as about codeÂwill be a lot harder for the incumbents to exploit.
While the incumbents use cheap open source software to run their back-ends systems, their business models largely depend on proprietary software and algorithms. But our view a new slew of open software, open protocols, and open standards will confront the incumbents with the classic Innovator's Dilemma. Should they adopt these tools and standards, painfully cannibalizing their existing revenue for a new unproven concept, or should they stick with their currently lucrative model with the risk that eventually a bunch of upstarts eat their lunch?
Credit should go to several of the web giants who have been making efforts to "open up." Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon all have Open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) built into their data and systems. Any software developer can access and use them for whatever creative purposes they wish. This means that the API provider becomes an open platform for everyone to use and build on top of. This notion has expanded like wildfire throughout the blogosphere, so nowadays, Open APIs are pretty much required.
Other incumbents also have open strategies. AOL has got the RSS religion, providing a feedreader and RSS search in order to escape the "walled garden of content" stigma. Apple now incorporates podcasts, the "personal radio shows" that are latest rage in audio narrowcasting, into iTunes. Even Microsoft is supporting open standards, for example by endorsing SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) for internet telephony and conferencing over Skype's proprietary format or one of its own devising.
But new open standards and protocols are in use, under construction, or being proposed every day, pushing the envelope of where we are right now. Many of these standards are coming from startup companies and small groups of developers, not from the giants. Together with the Open APIs, those new standards will contribute to a new, open infrastructure. Tens of thousands of developers will use and improve this open infrastructure to create new kinds of web-based applications and services, to offer web users a highly personalized online experience.
A Brief History of Openness
At this point, I have to admit that I am not just a passive observer, full-time journalist or "just some blogger"Âbut an active evangelist and developer of these standards. It's the vision of "open infrastructure" that's driving my company and the reason why I'm writing this article. This article will give you some of the background behind on these standards, and what the evolution of the next generation of open standards will look like.
Starting back in the 1980s, establishing a software standard was a key strategy for any software company. My former company, MacroMind (which became Macromedia), achieved this goal early on with Director. As Director evolved into Flash, the world saw that other companies besides Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple could establish true cross-platform, independent media standards.
Then Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen came along, and changed the rules of the software business and of entrepreneurialism. No matter how entrenched and "standardized" software was, the rug could still get pulled out from under it. Netscape did it to Microsoft, and then Microsoft did it back to Netscape. The web evolved, and lots of standards evolved with it. The leading open source standards (such as the LAMP stack) became widely used alternatives to proprietary closed-source offerings.
Open standards are more than just technology. Open standards mean sharing, empowering, and community support. Someone floats a new idea (or meme) and the community runs with it â with each person making their own contributions to the standard â evolving it without a moment's hesitation about "giving away their intellectual property."
One good example of this was Dave Sifry, who built the Technorati blog-tracking technology inspired by the Blogging Ecosystem, a weekend project by young hacker Phil Pearson. Dave liked what he saw and he ran with itÂturning Technorati into what it is today.
Dave Winer has contributed enormously to this area of open standards. He defined and personally created several open standards and protocolsÂsuch as RSS, OPML, and XML-RPC. Dave has also helped build the blogosphere through his enthusiasm and passion.
By 2003, hundreds of programmers were working on creating and establishing new standards for almost everything. The best of these new standards have evolved into compelling web services platforms â such as del.icio.us, Webjay, or Flickr. Some have even spun off formal standards â like XSPF (a standard for playlists) or instant messaging standard XMPP (also known as Jabber).
Today's Open APIs are complemented by standardized SchemasÂthe structure of the data itself and its associated meta-data. Take for example a podcasting feed. It consists of: a) the radio show itself, b) information on who is on the show, what the show is about and how long the show is (the meta-data) and also c) API calls to retrieve a show (a single feed item) and play it from a specified server.
The combination of Open APIs, standardized schemas for handling meta-data, and an industry which agrees on these standards are breaking the web wide open right now. So what new open standards should the web incumbentsÂand youÂbe watching? Keep an eye on the following developments:
Identity
Attention
Open Media
Microcontent Publishing
Open Social Networks
Tags
Pinging
Routing
Open Communications
Device Management and Control
1. Identity
Right now, you don't really control your own online identity. At the core of just about every online piece of software is a membership system. Some systems allow you to browse a site anonymouslyÂbut unless you register with the site you can't do things like search for an article, post a comment, buy something, or review it. The problem is that each and every site has its own membership system. So you constantly have to register with new systems, which cannot share dataÂeven you'd want them to. By establishing a "single sign-on" standard, disparate sites can allow users to freely move from site to site, and let them control the movement of their personal profile data, as well as any other data they've created.
With Passport, Microsoft unsuccessfully attempted to force its proprietary standard on the industry. Instead, a world is evolving where most people assume that users want to control their own data, whether that data is their profile, their blog posts and photos, or some collection of their past interactions, purchases, and recommendations. As long as users can control their digital identity, any kind of service or interaction can be layered on top of it.
Identity 2.0 is all about users controlling their own profile data and becoming their own agents. This way the users themselves, rather than other intermediaries, will profit from their ID info. Once developers start offering single sign-on to their users, and users have trusted places to store their dataÂwhich respect the limits and provide access controls over that data, users will be able to access personalized services which will understand and use their personal data.
Identity 2.0 may seem like some geeky, visionary future standard that isn't defined yet, but by putting each user's digital identity at the core of all their online experiences, Identity 2.0 is becoming the cornerstone of the new open web.
The Initiatives:
Right now, Identity 2.0 is under construction through various efforts from Microsoft (the "InfoCard" component built into the Vista operating system and its "Identity Metasystem"), Sxip Identity, Identity Commons, Liberty Alliance, LID (NetMesh's Lightweight ID), and SixApart's OpenID.
More Movers and Shakers:
Identity Commons and Kaliya Hamlin, Sxip Identity and Dick Hardt, the Identity Gang and Doc Searls, Microsoft's Kim Cameron, Craig Burton, Phil Windley, and Brad Fitzpatrick, to name a few.
2. Attention
How many readers know what their online attention is worth? If you don't, Google and Yahoo doÂthey make their living off our attention. They know what we're searching for, happily turn it into a keyword, and sell that keyword to advertisers. They make money off our attention. We don't.
Technorati and friends proposed an attention standard, Attention.xml, designed to "help you keep track of what you've read, what you're spending time on, and what you should be paying attention to." AttentionTrust is an effort by Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein to standardize on how captured end-user performance, browsing, and interest data are used.
Blogger Peter Caputa gives a good summary of AttentionTrust:"As we use the web, we reveal lots of information about ourselves by what we pay attention to. Imagine if all of that information could be stored in a nice neat little xml file. And when we travel around the web, we can optionally share it with websites or other people. We can make them pay for it, lease it ... we get to decide who has access to it, how long they have access to it, and what we want in return. And they have to tell us what they are going to do with our Attention data."
So when you give your attention to sites that adhere to the AttentionTrust, your attention rights (you own your attention, you can move your attention, you can pay attention and be paid for it, and you can see how your attention is used) are guaranteed. Attention data is crucial to the future of the open web, and Steve and Seth are making sure that no one entity or oligopoly controls it.
Movers and Shakers:
Steve Gillmor, Seth Goldstein, Dave Sifry and the other Attention.xml folks.
3. Open Media
Proprietary media standardsÂFlash, Windows Media, and QuickTime, to name a few Âhelped liven up the web. But they are proprietary standards that try to keep us locked in, and they weren't created from scratch to handle today's online content. That's why, for many of us, an Open Media standard has been a holy grail. Yahoo's new Media RSS standard brings us one step closer to achieving open media, as do Ogg Vorbis audio codecs, XSPF playlists, or MusicBrainz. And several sites offer digital creators not only a place to store their content, but also to sell it.
Media RSS (being developed by Yahoo with help from the community) extends RSS and combines it with "RSS enclosures" Âadds metadata to any media itemÂto create a comprehensive solution for media "narrowcasters." To gain acceptance for Media RSS, Yahoo knows it has to work with the community. As an active member of this community, I can tell you that we'll create Media RSS equivalents for rdf (an alternative subscription format) and Atom (yet another subscription format), so no one will be able to complain that Yahoo is picking sides in format wars.
When Yahoo announced the purchase of Flickr, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang insinuated that Yahoo is acquiring "open DNA" to turn Yahoo into an open standards player. Yahoo is showing what happens when you take a multi-billion dollar company and make openness one of its core valuesÂso Google, beware, even if Google does have more research fellows and Ph.D.s.
The open media landscape is far and wide, reaching from game machine hacks and mobile phone downloads to PC-driven bookmarklets, players, and editors, and it includes many other standardization efforts. XSPF is an open standard for playlists, and MusicBrainz is an alternative to the proprietary (and originally effectively stolen) database that Gracenote licenses.
Ourmedia.org is a community front-end to Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive. Brewster has promised free bandwidth and free storage forever to any content creators who choose to share their content via the Internet Archive. Ourmedia.org is providing an easy-to-use interface and community to get content in and out of the Internet Archive, giving ourmedia.org users the ability to share their media anywhere they wish, without being locked into a particular service or tool. Ourmedia plans to offer open APIs and an open media registry that interconnects other open media repositories into a DNS-like registry (just like the www domain system), so folks can browse and discover open content across many open media services. Systems like Brightcove and Odeo support the concept of an open registry, and hope to work with digital creators to sell their work to fulfill the financial aspect of the "Long Tail."
More Movers and Shakers:
Creative Commons, the Open Media Network, Jay Dedman, Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi, Eli Chapman, Kenyatta Cheese, Doug Kaye, Brad Horowitz, Lucas Gonze, Robert Kaye, Christopher Allen, Brewster Kahle, JD Lasica, and indeed, Marc Canter, among others.
4. Microcontent Publishing
Unstructured content is cheap to create, but hard to search through. Structured content is expensive to create, but easy to search. Microformats resolve the dilemma with simple structures that are cheap to use and easy to search.
The first kind of widely adopted microcontent is blogging. Every post is an encapsulated idea, addressable via a URL called a permalink. You can syndicate or subscribe to this microcontent using RSS or an RSS equivalent, and news or blog aggregators can then display these feeds in a convenient readable fashion. But a blog post is just a block of unstructured textânot a bad thing, but just a first step for microcontent. When it comes tostructured data, such as personal identity profiles, product reviews, or calendar-type event data, RSS was not designed to maintain the integrity of the structures.
Right now, blogging doesn't have the underlying structure necessary for full-fledged microcontent publishing. But that will change. Think of local information services (such as movie listings, event guides, or restaurant reviews) that any college kid can access and use in her weekend programming project to create new services and tools.
Today's blogging tools will evolve into microcontent publishing systems, and will help spread the notion of structured data across the blogosphere. New ways to store, represent and produce microcontent will create new standards, such as Structured Blogging and Microformats. Microformats differ from RSS feeds in that you can't subscribe to them. Instead, Microformats are embedded into webpages and discovered by search engines like Google or Technorati. Microformats are creating common definitions for "What is a review or event? What are the specific fields in the data structure?" They can also specify what we can do with all this information.OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is a hierarchical file format for storing microcontent and structured data. It was developed by Dave Winer of RSS and podcast fame.
Events are one popular type of microcontent. OpenEvents is already working to create shared databases of standardized events, which would get used by a new generation of event portalsâsuch as Eventful/EVDB, Upcoming.org, and WhizSpark. The idea of OpenEvents is that event-oriented systems and services can work together to establish shared events databases (and associated APIs) that any developer could then use to create and offer their own new service or application. OpenReviews is still in the conceptual stage, but it would make it possible to provide open alternatives to closed systems like Epinions, and establish a shared database of local and global reviews. Its shared open servers would be filled with all sorts of reviews for anyone to access.
Why is this important? Because I predict that in the future, 10 times more people will be writing reviews than maintaining their own blog. The list of possible microcontent standards goes on: OpenJobpostings, OpenRecipes, and even OpenLists. Microsoft recently revealed that it has been working on an important new kind of microcontent: Listsâso OpenLists will attempt to establish standards for the kind of lists we all use, such as lists of Links, lists of To Do Items, lists of People, Wish Lists, etc.
Movers and Shakers:
Tantek Ãelik and Kevin Marks of Technorati, Danny Ayers, Eric Meyer, Matt Mullenweg, Rohit Khare, Adam Rifkin, Arnaud Leene, Seb Paquet, Alf Eaton, Phil Pearson, Joe Reger, Bob Wyman among others.
5. Open Social Networks
I'll never forget the first time I met Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster. He was arrogant and brash and he claimed he "owned"Â all his users, and that he was going to monetize them and make a fortune off them. This attitude robbed Friendster of its momentum, letting MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks take Friendster's place.
Jonathan's notion of social networks as a way to control users is typical of the Web 1.0 business model and its attitude towards users in general. Social networks have become one of the battlegrounds between old and new ways of thinking. Open standards for Social Networking will define those sides very clearly. Since meeting Jonathan, I have been working towards finding and establishing open standards for social networks. Instead of closed, centralized social networks with 10 million people in them, the goal is making it possible to have 10 million social networks that each have 10 people in them.
FOAF (which stands for Friend Of A Friend, and describes people and relationships in a way that computers can parse) is a schema to represent not only your personal profile's meta-data, but your social network as well. Thousands of researchers use the FOAF schema in their "Semantic Web" projects to connect people in all sorts of new ways. XFN is a microformat standard for representing your social network, while vCard (long familiar to users of contact manager programs like Outlook) is a microformat that contains your profile information. Microformats are baked into any xHTML webpage, which means thatany blog, social network page, or any webpage in general can "contain" your social network in itÂand be used byany compatible tool, service or application.
PeopleAggregator is an earlier project now being integrated into open content management framework Drupal. The PeopleAggregator APIs will make it possible to establish relationships, send messages, create or join groups, and post between different social networks. (Sneak preview: this technology will be available in the upcoming GoingOn Network.)
All of these open social networking standards mean that inter-connected social networks will form a mesh that will parallel the blogosphere. This vibrant, distributed, decentralized world will be driven by open standards: personalized online experiences are what the new open web will be all aboutÂand what could be more personalized than people's networks?
Movers and Shakers:
Eric Sigler, Joel De Gan, Chris Schmidt, Julian Bond, Paul Martino, Mary Hodder, Drummond Reed, Dan Brickley, Randy Farmer, and Kaliya Hamlin, to name a few.
6. Tags
Nowadays, no self-respecting tool or service can ship without tags. Tags are keywords or phrases attached to photos, blog posts, URLs, or even video clips. These user- and creator-generated tags are an open alternative to what used to be the domain of librarians and information scientists: categorizing information and content using taxonomies. Tags are instead creating "folksonomies."
The recently proposed OpenTags concept would be an open, community-owned version of the popular Technorati Tags service. It would aggregate the usage of tags across a wide range of services, sites, and content tools. In addition to Technorati's current tag features, OpenTags would let groups of people share their tags in "TagClouds." Open tagging is likely to include some of the open identity features discussed above, to create a tag system that is resilient to spam, and yet trustable across sites all over the web.
OpenTags owes a debt to earlier versions of shared tagging systems, which include Topic Exchange and something called the k-collectorÂa knowledge management tag aggregatorÂfrom Italian company eVectors.
Movers & Shakers:
Phil Pearson, Matt Mower , Paolo Valdemarin, and Mary Hodder and Drummond Reed again, among others.
7. Pinging
Websites used to be mostly static. Search engines that crawled (or "spidered") them every so often did a good enough job to show reasonably current versions of your cousin's homepage or even Time magazine's weekly headlines. But when blogging took off, it became hard for search engines to keep up. (Google has only just managed to offer blog-search functionality, despite buying Blogger back in early 2003.)
To know what was new in the blogosphere, users couldn't depend on services that spidered webpages once in a while. The solution: a way for blogs themselves to automatically notify blog-tracking sites that they'd been updated. Weblogs.com was the first blog "ping service": it displayed the name of a blog whenever that blog was updated. Pinging sites helped the blogosphere grow, and more tools, services, and portals started using pinging in new and different ways. Dozens of pinging services and sitesÂmost of which can't talk to each otherÂsprang up.
Matt Mullenweg (the creator of open source blogging software WordPress) decided that a one-stop service for pinging was needed. He created Ping-o-MaticÂwhich aggregates ping services and simplifies the pinging process for bloggers and tool developers. With Ping-o-Matic, any developer can alert all of the industry's blogging tools and tracking sites at once. This new kind of open standard, with shared infrastructure, is a critical to the scalability of Web 2.0 services.
As Matt said:There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. However it would be expensive for all the services to crawl all the blogs in the world all the time. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated so they can come check you out. They get the freshest data possible, you don't get a thousand robots spidering your site all the time. Everybody wins.
Movers and Shakers:
Matt Mullenweg, Jim Winstead, Dave Winer
8. Routing
Bloggers used to have to manually enter the links and content snippets of blog posts or news items they wanted to blog. Today, some RSS aggregators can send a specified post directly into an associated blogging tool: as bloggers browse through the feeds they subscribe to, they can easily specify and send any post they wish to "reblog" from their news aggregator or feed reader into their blogging tool. (This is usually referred to as "BlogThis.") As structured blogging comes into its own (see the section on Microcontent Publishing), it will be increasingly important to maintain the structural integrity of these pieces of microcontent when reblogging them.
Promising standard RedirectThis will combine a "BlogThis"-like capability while maintaining the integrity of the microcontent. RedirectThis will let bloggers and content developers attach a simple "PostThis" button to their posts. Clicking on that button will send that post to the reader/blogger's favorite blogging tool. This favorite tool is specified at the RedirectThis web service, where users register their blogging tool of choice. RedirectThis also helps maintain the integrity and structure of microcontentÂthen it's just up to the user to prefer a blogging tool that also attains that lofty goal of microcontent integrity.
OutputThis is another nascent web services standard, to let bloggers specify what "destinations" they'd like to have as options in their blogging tool. As new destinations are added to the service, more checkboxes would get added to their blogging toolÂallowing them to route their published microcontent to additional destinations.
Movers and Shakers:
Michael Migurski, Lucas Gonze
9. Open Communications
Likely, you've experienced the joys of finding friends on AIM or Yahoo Messenger, or the convenience of Skyping with someone overseas. Not that you're about to throw away your mobile phone or BlackBerry, but for many, also having access to Instant Messaging (IM) and Voice over IP (VoIP) is crucial.
IM and VoIP are mainstream technologies that already enjoy the benefits of open standards. Entire industries are bornÂright this secondÂbased around these open standards. Jabber has been an open IM technology for yearsÂin fact, as XMPP, it was officially dubbed a standard by the IETF. Although becoming an official IETF standard is usually the kiss of death, Jabber looks like it'll be around for a while, as entire generations of collaborative, work-group applications and services have been built on top of its messaging protocol. For VoIP, Skype is clearly the leading standard todayÂthough one could argue just how "open" it is (and defenders of the IETF's SIP standard often do). But it is free and user-friendly, so there won't be much argument from users about it being insufficiently open. Yet there may be a cloud on Skype's horizon: web behemoth Google recently released a beta of Google Talk, an IM client committed to open standards. It currently supports XMPP, and will support SIP for VoIP calls.
Movers and Shakers:
Jeremie Miller, Henning Schulzrinne, Jon Peterson, Jeff Pulver
10. Device Management and Control
To access online content, we're using more and more devices. BlackBerrys, iPods, Treos, you name it. As the web evolves, more and more different devices will have to communicate with each other to give us the content we want when and where we want it. No-one wants to be dependent on one vendor anymoreÂlike, say, SonyÂfor their laptop, phone, MP3 player, PDA, and digital camera, so that it all works together. We need fully interoperable devices, and the standards to make that work. And to fully make use of how content is moving online content and innovative web services, those standards need to be open.
MIDI (musical instrument digital interface), one of the very first open standards in music, connected disparate vendors' instruments, post-production equipment, and recording devices. But MIDI is limited, and MIDI II has been very slow to arrive. Now a new standard for controlling musical devices has emerged: OSC (Open SoundControl). This protocol is optimized for modern networking technology and inter-connects music, video and controller devices with "other multimedia devices." OSC is used by a wide range of developers, and is being taken up in the mainstream MIDI marketplace.
Another open-standards-based device management technology is ZigBee, for building wireless intelligence and network monitoring into all kinds of devices. ZigBee is supported by many networking, consumer electronics, and mobile device companies.
   · · · · · ·  Â
The Change to Openness
The rise of open source software and its "architecture of participation" are completely shaking up the old proprietary-web-services-and-standards approach. Sun MicrosystemsÂwhose proprietary Java standard helped define the Web 1.0Âis opening its Solaris OS and has even announced the apparent paradox of an open-source Digital Rights Management system.
Today's incumbents will have to adapt to the new openness of the Web 2.0. If they stick to their proprietary standards, code, and content, they'll become the new walled gardensÂplaces users visit briefly to retrieve data and content from enclosed data silos, but not where users "live." The incumbents' revenue models will have to change. Instead of "owning" their users, users will know they own themselves, and will expect a return on their valuable identity and attention. Instead of being locked into incompatible media formats, users will expect easy access to digital content across many platforms.
Yesterday's web giants and tomorrow's users will need to find a mutually beneficial new balanceÂbetween open and proprietary, developer and user, hierarchical and horizontal, owned and shared, and compatible and closed.
Marc Canter is an active evangelist and developer of open standards. Early in his career, Marc founded MacroMind, which became Macromedia. These days, he is CEO of Broadband Mechanics, a founding member of the Identity Gang and of ourmedia.org. Broadband Mechanics is currently developing the GoingOn Network (with the AlwaysOn Network), as well as an open platform for social networking called the PeopleAggregator.
A version of the above post appears in the Fall 2005 issue of AlwaysOn's quarterly print blogozine, and ran as a four-part series on the AlwaysOn Network website.(Via Marc's Voice.)
Microsoft Gadgets, Start.com and Innovation: "
A lot of the comments in the initial post on the Microsoft Gadgets blog are complaints that the Microsoft is copying ideas from Apple's dashboard. First of all, people should give credit where it is due and acknowledge that Konfabulator is the real pioneer when it comes to desktop widgets. More importantly, the core ideas in Microsoft Gadgets were pioneered by Microsoft not Apple or Konfabulator.
From the post A Brief History of Windows Sidebar by Sean Alexander
Microsoft 'Sideshow*' Research Project (2000-2001)
While work started prior, in September 2001, a team of Microsoft researchers published a paper entitled, 'Sideshow: Providing peripheral awareness of important information' including findings of their project.
...
The research paper provides screenshots that bear a striking resemblance to the Windows Sidebar. The paper is a good read for anyone thinking about Gadget development. For folks who have visited Microsoft campuses, you may recall the posters in elevator hallways and Sidebar running on many employees desktops. Technically one of the first teams to implement this concept*Internal code-name, not directly related to the official, âÂÂWindows SideShowâ¢â auxiliary display feature in Windows Vista.>
Microsoft âÂÂLonghornâ Alpha Release (2003)
In 2003, Microsoft unveiled a new feature called, 'Sidebar' at the Microsoft Professional DeveloperâÂÂs Conference. This feature took the best concepts from Microsoft Research and applied them to a new platform code-named, 'Avalon', now formally known as Windows Presentation Foundation...
Microsoft Windows Vista PDC Release (2005)
While removed from public eye during the Longhorn plan change in 2004, a small team was formed to continue to incubate Windows Sidebar as a concept, dating back to its roots in 2000/2001 as a research exercise. Now Windows Sidebar will be a feature of Windows Vista. Feedback from customers and hardware industry dynamics are being taken into account, particularly adding support for DHTML-based Gadgets to support a broader range of developer and designer, enhanced security infrastructure, and better support for Widescreen (16:10, 16:9) displays. Additionally a new feature in Windows Sidebar is support for hosting of Web Gadgets which can be hosted on sites such as Start.com or run locally. Gadgets that run on the Windows desktop will also be available for Windows XP customers â more details to be shared here in the future.
So the desktop version of 'Microsoft Gadgets' is the shipping version of Microsoft Research's 'Sideshow' project. Since the research paper was published a number of parties have shipped products inspired by that research including MSN Dashboard, Google Desktop and Desktop Sidebar but this doesn't change the fact that the Microsoft is the pioneer in this space.
From the post Gadgets and Start.com by Sanaz Ahari
Start.com was initially released on February 2005, on start.com/1 â since then weâÂÂve been innovating regularly (start.com/2, start.com/3, start.com and start.com/pdc) working towards accomplishing our goals:
- To bring the webâÂÂs content to users through:
- Rich DHTML components (Gadgets)
- RSS and behaviors associated with RSS
- High customizability and personalization
- To enable developers to extend their start experience by building their own Gadgets
Yesterday marked a humble yet significant milestone for us â we opened our 'Atlas' framework enabling developers to extend their start.com experience. You can read more it here: http://start.com/developer. The key differentiators about our Gadgets are:
- Most web applications were designed as closed systems rather than as a web platform. For example, most customizable 'aggregator' web-sites consume feeds and provide a fair amount of layout customization. However, the systems were not extensible by developers. With start.com, the experience is now an integrated and extensible application platform.
- We will be enriching the gadgets experience even further, enabling these gadgets to seamlessly work on Windows Sidebar
The Start.com stuff is really cool. Currently with traditional portal sites like MyMSN or MyYahoo, I can customize my data sources by subscribing to RSS feeds but not how they look. Instead all my RSS feeds always look like a list of headlines. These portal sites usually use different widgets for display richer data like stock quotes or weather reports but there is no way for me to subscribe to a stock quote or weather report feed and have it look the same as the one provided by the site. Start.com fundamentally changes this model by turning it on its head. I can create a custom RSS feed and specify how it should render in Start.com using JavaScript which basically makes it a Start.com gadget, no different from the default ones provided by the site.
From my perspective, we're shipping really innovative stuff but because of branding that has attempted to cash in on the 'widgets' hype, we end up looking like followers and copycats.
Marketing sucks.
" Posted for historic annotation purposes (re. Widgets as Microsoft didn't copy Apple here at all; Apple just packaged this better at the expense of Konfabulator as already noted above). And yes, Marketing sucks big time!!]]>In the past I have expressed views that echo the essence of John's piece. It has been pretty darn clear to me that Microsoft is struggling as a result of its inability to handle challenges associated with the metaphoric "computing vase" which it sought to own solely as a result of its proclivity for crushing and/or alienating erstwhile technology partners as part of this quest (a process that commenced a long time ago culminating the contradiction and ultimate paradox called IE7; remember not too long ago it was impossible to separate IE from Windows! It could only exist as an OS extension etc.).
Windows in its current incarnation fails to provide a productive working environment, you either have a plethora of viruses and spyware contending for you computing resources, or you have all the software in place to protect against these assaults rendering the computing resources equally busy. The computing power lag is simply too much when using windows, and this is its achilles heel!
I have been using Windows since version 2.0, and although I have always found the Mac OS variations to be superior on the UI front, I never found any of the historic versions viable alternatives. In my case, this is all about providing a productive work environment across the following usage modes, in descending order of priority:
1. Power User (OutLook, Excel, WORD, and other desktop productivity tools)
2. Product Testing and QA
3. Programmer Buddy (a Microsoft term)
4. Programming (for the most part prototyping)
The release of Mac OS X Tiger lead me down an evaluation path that I have repeated many times in the past: test the viability of moving wholesale from Windows to Mac OS X and remain functional (if really lucky, exceed existing productivity levels). This time around I found that I could actually migrate over 6 years worth of emails, contacts, presentations, documents, spreadsheets from Windows to Mac OS X. I also discovered that success extended all the way to my data linked documents that are transparently bound to back-end databases (in my case the norm rather the exception via ODBC).
I now use Mac OS X as my prime working platform (I still have to use Windows as the platform remains strategic for all our product offerings), and I am absolutely loving it! The joint feelings of euphoria and confusion that I experienced post migration were similar to how I felt after making the transition from "stick shift" to "automatic" geared cars (as I transitioned my residence from the UK to the U.S). At the time I couldn't understand why anyone (other than a grand prix driver) would ever drive a "stick shift" by choice.
Today, I can't understand why I stuck with Windows for so long at the expense of my daily working productivity. The biggest bonus from this transition is that Mac OS X has made it easier for me to engage less technical individuals (family & friends) in the sheer joy and potential of Information Technology across a variety of realms as opposed to being confined to the "business computing" realm solely. I can demonstrate the power and potential of the Internet, Web, Web Services, Blogosphere, Wikispehere, with much more sanity and coherence now that my machine responds in a timely fashion during these demos amongst other benefits.
Some may deem this windows bashing, but if they take the time to look a little deeper, this is simply about "straight shooting" from a real computer user (I like my computers to do deliver on their hugh potential promised; I don't compromise this basic expectation; my computer and associate software should save me time and ramp up my productivity!) . If Microsoft is the company that it once was, then it would simply use this kind of commentary to rally its troops and get its act together! That's what I would do if a customer felt so badly about our technology (UDA or Virtuoso).
]]>Bill Gates: Cell Phones Will Overtake MP3 Players, Calls iPod 'Unsustainable' Microsoft's chairman draws on computing history to make his proclamation that the iPod phenomenon won't...
"Why did Foreman lose to Ali? The fact is Ali beat Foreman because he was tougher and stronger than he's ever given credit for. Ali didn't box Foreman! He went to the ropes and allowed Foreman to hit on him, is that boxing? What if Foreman had knocked him out while he was stationary against the ropes. It would've been said for the rest of time, why did Ali remain stationary letting Foreman get off on him? How come he didn't use the ring and box? Which is exactly what those watching the fight were thinking and saying during rounds two through eight. That's not boxing, that's being forced to fight because your opponent will not allow you to box."
Ajax, Hard Facts, Brass Tacks ... and Bad Slacks
<a>
and <form>
pack an enormous amount of functionality into deceptively simple tags, so too can new declarative mark-up capture patterns that have emerged 'in the wild'.
<form action=/search name=f>
<input type=hidden name=hl value=en>
<input maxLength=256 size=55 name=q value="">
<input type=submit value="Google Search" name=btnG>
</form>
<a>
and <form>
are pretty much the same thing.)
<xf:submission id="sub-search"
action="http://www.google.com/complete/search?hl=en"
method="get" separator="&"
replace="all"
/>
<xf:input ref="q">
<xf:label>Query:</xf:label>
</xf:input>
<xf:submit submission="sub-search">
<xf:label>Google Search</xf:label>
</xf:submit>
replace
attribute is actually optional in XForms, but I showed it in the previous mark-up so that you can compare it to this:
<xf:submission id="sub-search"
action="http://www.google.com/complete/search?hl=en"
method="get" separator="&"
replace="instance"
/>
replace
attribute can take the values all
, instance
, or none
.)
var req;
function loadXMLDoc(url) {
// native XMLHttpRequest object
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
req = new XMLHttpRequest();
req.onreadystatechange = readyStateChange;
req.open("GET", url, true);
req.send(null);
// IE/Windows ActiveX version
} else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
if (req) {
req.onreadystatechange = readyStateChange;
req.open("GET", url, true);
req.send();
}
}
}
readyStateChange()
method is invoked:
function readyStateChange() {
// '4' means document "loaded"
if (req.readyState == 4) {
// 200 means "OK"
if (req.status == 200) {
// do something here
} else {
// error processing here
}
}
}
<a>
in order to enter the exciting new world of 'hypertext' -- but XMLHttpRequest raises the bar again, and takes us right back into the heart of geek-world.
if (req.status == 200) {
// do something here
} else {
// error processing here
}
<xf:action ev:observer="sub-search" ev:event="xforms-submit-error">
<xf:message level="modal">
Submission failed
</xf:message>
</xf:action>
submission
part of XForms:multipart/related
;put
means the same thing whether the target URL begins http:
or file:
, a form with relative paths will run unchanged on a local machine or a web server;submission
element to read and write from an ADO database, allowing programmers to convert forms from using the web to using a local database by doing nothing more than changing a single target URL. (Try doing that with XMLHttpRequest!)submission
part of XForms is in fact so powerful that it will eventually form a separate specification, for use in other languages.<div>
, a CSS display: none;
, a mouseover
event handler and a timer? Nowadays the programmer with better things to do than work with spaghetti-JavaScript just uses the XForms <hint>
element, and for free they get platform independence (and therefore accessibility), as well as the ability to insert any mark-up.message
s?Here goes:
Blog Editing
I can use any editor that supports the following Blog Post APIs:
- Moveable Type
- Meta Weblog
- Blogger
Typically I use Virtuoso (which has an unreleased WYSIWYG blog post editor), Newzcrawler, ecto, Zempt, or w.bloggar for my posts. If a post is of interest to me, or relevant to our company or customers I tend to perform one of the following tasks:
- Generate a post using the "Blog This" feature of my blog editor
- Write a new post that was triggered by a previously read post etc.
Either way, the posts end up in our company wide blog server that is Virtuoso based (more about this below). The internal blog server automatically categorizes my blog posts, and automagically determines which posts to upstream to other public blogs that I author (e.g http://kidehen.typepad.com ) or co-author (e.g http://www.openlinksw.com/weblogs/uda and http://www.openlinksw.com/weblogs/virtuoso ). I write once and my posts are dispatched conditionally to multiple outlets.
RSS/Atom/RDF Aggregation & Reading
I discover, subscribe to, and view blog feeds using Newzcrawler (primarily), and from time to time for experimentation and evaluation purposes I use RSS Bandit, FeedDemon, and Bloglines. I am in the process of moving this activity over to Virtuoso completely due to the large number of feeds that I consume on a daily basis (scalability is a bit of a problem with current aggregators).
Blog Publishing
When you visit my blog you are experiencing the soon to be released Virtuoso Blog Publishing engine first hand, which is how WebDAV, SQLX, XQuery/XPath, and Free Text etc. come into the mix.
Each time I create a post internally, or subscribe to an external feed, the data ends up in Virtuoso's SQL Engine (this is how we handle some of the obvious scalability challenges associated with large subscription counts). This engine is SQL2000N based, which implies that it can transform SQL to XML on the fly using recent extensions to SQL in the form of SQLX (prior to the emergence of this standard we used the FOR XML SQL syntax extensions for the same result). It also has its own in-built XSLT processor (DB Engine resident), and validating XML parser (with support for XML Schema). Thus, my RSS/RDF/Atom archives, FOAF, BlogRoll, OPML, and OCS blog syndication gems are all live examples of SQLX documents that leverage Virtuoso's WebDAV engine for exposure to Blog Clients.
Blog Search
When you search for blog posts using the basic or advanced search features of my blog, you end up interacting with one of the following methods of querying data hosted in Virtuoso: Free Text Search, XPath, or XQuery. The result sets produced by the search feature uses SQLX to produce subscription gems (RSS/Atom/RDF/OpenSearch) and URIs that enable dynamic tracking of my posts using your search keywords.
BTW - the http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen blog home page exists as a result of Virtuoso's Virtual Domain / Multi-Homing Web Server functionality. The entire site resides in an Object Relational DBMS, and I can take my DB file across Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, and SCO UnixWare without missing a single beat! All I have to do is instantiate my Virtuoso server and my weblog is live.
]]>Exhibit A: From The Submarine by Paul Graham
PR people fear bloggers for the same reason readers like them. And that means there may be a struggle ahead. As this new kind of writing draws readers away from traditional media, we should be prepared for whatever PR mutates into to compensate. When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in the traditional media, I can't imagine they'll work any less hard to feed stories to bloggers, if they can figure out how.
Exhibit B: From My Dinner With Microsoft's Jim Allchin in Thomas Hawk's weblog
Last night I had a unique opportunity to sit down with Jim Allchin, Microsoftâs Group Vice President for Platforms, for dinner along with a group of other bloggers and technologists and discuss the future development of Longhorn as well as see an early demo of the Longhorn technology firsthand.
Exhibit C: From A comment on Slashdot by Thomas Hawk about the dinner
]]>I do feel that there is room in the world of journalism for hard news, op/ed and yes, openly biased writing where the blogger places him or her self as a participant in the news itself.
Was I thrilled to be having dinner with Allchin? Of course. I'm a huge Microsoft enthusiast. I have been an advocate of the digital home for many years and I think that Microsoft may represent our best chance possible of making the digital home of the future a reality.
Was I really enthused about Longhorn? Absolutely. From what I saw it was really was amazing. I spend hundreds of hours every year organizing digital media in front of all five of my Windows PCs. The technology that I saw will save me hundreds of hours of work going forward. This is really exciting to me at a personal level.
I think this marketing message for the next release of Windows is broken, especially for someone whose been using what appears to be a not "just working" operating systems since Windows 2.0 :-(
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The shakesperian tale of Macbeth also comes to mind as depicted in the excerpt below:
".... Macbeth goes to visit the witches in their cavern. There, they show him a sequence of demons and spirits who present him with further prophecies: he must beware of Macduff, a Scottish nobleman who opposed Macbeth's accession to the throne; he is incapable of being harmed by any man born of woman; and he will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle. "
Having used all the major operating systems on a serious basis for a number of years in a variety of modes; user, developer, and administrator. I have always felt that a RISC based UNIX operating system (of BSD genealogical branch extraction), if somehow combined with a user interface that is superior to Windows, would ultimately unravel the Windows Desktop Monopoly. That operating system exists today in the form of Mac OS X (its lastest Tiger release simply kicks the differential up a notch).
Back to the Macbeth correlation:
"Birnam Woods coming to Dunsinane" is the metaphoric equivalent of desktop users and first time computer users being forced (by the scourge of virus and spyware) to revaluate Windows as the only choice for productive desktop computing. What would you recommend to "Aunt Milly" when she tells you she wants to get on the Internet? Especially if "Aunt Milly" isn't living with you?
"Man not born of a woman" is no different to saying: UNIX with a superior user interface to Windows!
I don't think you need me to tell who play the characters of Macbeth and Macduff in this drama :-)
The Windows security vulnerabilities quagmire (google juice on this phrase is currently 6,620 pages) has basically created an inflection of monumental proportions adversely affecting Windows and creating great visibility and evaluation building opportunities for Mac OS X ("once users experience a Mac they don't come back to Windows!").
Paul Murphy of cio-today.com has also written a great article sheds light on the often overlooked hardware aspect to the security problem for Windows Here is a poignant excerpt:
Software and Hardware Vulnerabilities
At present, attacks on Microsoft's Windows products are generally drawn from a different population of possible attacks than those on Unix variants such as BSD, Linux and Solaris. From a practical perspective, the key difference is that attacks on Wintel tend to have two parts: A software vulnerability is exploited to give a remote attacker access to the x86 hardware and that access is then used to gain control of the machine.
In contrast, attacks on Unix generally require some form of initial legal access to the machine and focus on finding software ways to upgrade priveleges illegally.
Consider, for example, CAN-2004-1134 in the NIST vulnerabilities database:
Summary: Buffer overflow in the Microsoft W3Who ISAPI (w3who.dll) allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a long query string.
Published Before: 1/10/2005
Severity: High
The vulnerability exists in Microsoft's code, but the exploit depends on the rigid stack-order execution and limited page protection inherent in the x86 architecture. If Windows ran on Risc, that vulnerability would still exist, but it would be a non-issue because the exploit opportunity would be more theoretical than practical.
Linux and open-source applications are thought to have far fewer software vulnerabilities than Microsoft's products, but Linux on Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) is susceptible to the same kind of attacks as those now predominantly affecting Wintel users. For real long-term security improvements, therefore, the right answer is to look at Linux, or any other Unix, on non x86 hardware.
One such option is provided by Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL - news) BSD-based products on the PowerPC-derived G4 and G5 CPUs. Linus Torvalds, for example, apparently now runs Linux on a Mac G5 and there are several Linux distributions for this hardware -- all of which are immune to the typical x86-oriented exploit.
This may even been the nullifier of that age old argument about porting Mac OS X to the x86 in order to broaden its adoption potential?
Mac OS X is certainly a breath of fresh air for anyone who needs to simply get stuff done with their desktops and notebooks.
]]>The Internet Archive initiative is building up an amazing collection of content that includes this "must watch" movie about the somewhat forgotten hypercard development environment.
As I watched the hypercard movie I obtained clear reassurance that my vision of Web 2.0 as critical infrastructure for a future Semantic Web isn't unfounded. The solution building methodology espoused by hypercard is exactly how Semantic Web applications will be built, and this will be done by orchestrating the componentary of Web 2.0.
When watching this clip make the following mental adjustments:
Web 2.0 is a reflection of the web taking its first major step out of the technology stone age (certainly the case relative to the hypercard movie and "pre web" application development in general).
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The article discusses most of the key issues, but it should also have included and discussed he following question: "should Microsoft benefit from the mess that we let them create?". By "we" I mean the extensive pool of Microsoft product consumers, developers, and partners etc.
I have worked with Microsoft products (as a developer and user) for more years than I would like to remember; I have personally experienced the journey from Windows 2.0 to Windows XP (and played around with Longhorn).
I added my question to this dialog as without it's resultant perspective, history will simply repeat itself. If IT technology decision makers don't change their product selection and acquisition habits, then why should Microsoft or any other vendor change their ways? Especially when a perpetual promise-under deliver-repromise cycle works absolutely fine. This isn't rocket science, it basic common sense (but we know that common sense ain't that common).
Microsoft like most software companies seek significant portions of their revenue growth from product upgrades. In a sense, it inherently implies that these products will always be millions of miles away from the "silver bullet" promises espoused in the pre product release marketing and PR hype. Sadly, there was a time when Marketing and PR hype used to be about new features; a time when there was a clear line between a new feature and a fundamental product bug.
Buying products from any company simply because they have the largest market share is dumb! All it does is encourage other vendors to focus on product market share rather than product quality, which ultimately results in the following:
Microsoft isn't a unique source of this problem, but hey! They are the largest Software Company (the one with the vital market share), and their software products are on some 80-90% of desktops on this planet, and the planet isn't at its most productive at the current time, and no matter how you look at it, this loss of productivity has something to do with the increased nuisance of desktop computing.
If Microsoft could just focus on its core competence (BTW - I can't quite pint point this anymore since they are in every software market that exists today), it would have at least have an iota of a chance in hell of cleaning up this mess.
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Speaking of the Mac A little humor for the day, from one of my fav sites.
By Bill Gates, Microsoft Executive Mail
Microsoft's product interoperability strategy: "First, we continue to support customers' needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of 'interoperability by design' across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities... The XML-based architecture for Web services, known as WS-* ('WS-Star'), is being developed in close collaboration with dozens of other companies in the industry including IBM, Sun, Oracle and BEA. This standard set of protocols significantly reduces the cost and complexity of connecting disparate systems, and it enables interoperability not just within the four walls of an organization, but also across the globe."
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-03interoperability.asp
Amen Bill! As long as this doesn't covertly imply "Windows Specificity" by way of "Interoperability" becoming a "Windows Unique Selling Point"!
As per usual, the devil will be in the implementation details of your company's products.
]]>The Microsoft Memo Bill Gates hires open-source icon Linus Torvalds? That was just the beginning of Redmond's hybrid strategy to face the free software age. Fanciful prognostication by Gary Wolf from Wired magazine.
Enjoy!
]]>In a post entitled When will Scoble earn his Longhorn pay?
Buzzword decibels are rising on the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and as per usual in our industry there is a shortage of concise and unadulterated descriptions of ESB the product moniker and its value proposition.