Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

OpenLink Software Announces Virtuoso 3.2

This Blog Site is actually powered by Virtuoso 3.2 (has been doing so prior to the announcement). Hmm. product utilization preceding press release? Why not?

OpenLink adds Weblog client and server functionality to
Virtual Database Engine for SQL, XML, and Web Services

Burlington, MA. June 25, 2003 - OpenLink Software, Inc., a leading provider of universal data access and enterprise information integration middleware, announces Virtuoso 3.2 — the latest edition of its cross platform Virtual Database for SQL, XML, and Web Services — for Mac® OS X.

The new release incorporates full client and server support for the Blogger, Moveable Type, and MetaWeblog APIs, providing users with choice over location, format, data storage, development environment, and host operating system, for personal, community, and corporate Weblogs. The new release also facilitates the transparent integration of Weblog data with other enterprise data sources.

Full Press Release

Putting together the community site took 5 minutes and it basically involved the following steps:

1. Standard installation from installer program (Mac OS X in this case, but Windows, Linux, and UNIX supported)

2. Creation of WebDAV user account for WebDAV repository (where all the gems reside)

3. Clicking on the "Generate Web Site" button situated in the Weblog menu tree with the Virtuoso HTML based Admin UI

4. Filled up my channel and blogrolls by asking Virtuoso to use it’s very old web content aggregation functionality

5. Setup my upstreams (so that I post once and propagate to my numerous blog sites on a conditional basis)

6. Create a Virtuoso HTTP Virtual Domain for the community/personal Blog

7. Start blogging using any Blog Client that supports; Blogger API, MetaWeblog, or Moveable Type

No more no less. Most importantly I have a choice of programming languages (VSP, VSX, PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, Perl, Python), operating systems, and databases that constitute the shape and form of my blog home.

See the Virtuoso FAQ for how this all comes together.

Burlington, MA. 25 June 2003 - OpenLink Software, Inc., industry and technology leader in the development and deployment of secure, high-performance database connectivity drivers for ODBC

We all know that the only benchmark that matters, is the one that you run in-house using the systems that comprise your IT infrastructure.

Apple's benchmarks under fire ZDNet Jun 25 2003 7:13AM ET

[via Moreover - ZDNet]

OpenLink Software has provided an Open Source benchmark utility that support Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX. Thus, if mission critical database oriented performance is what is most relevant to your needs (as opposed to Photoshop) then simply download either one, or both of the following:

OpenLink ODBC Bench (you can test TPC-A and TPC-C like performance of the G5 and compare against other platforms) via ODBC)

OpenLink JDBC Bench (same thing using JDBC)

Lack Of Internet Skills A Barrier To Progress At Work

We need to get with the program, technology is no silver bullet, we have brains for a reason, we simply need to exercise the brain muscle (this activity has been in rapid decline). The piece below pretty much sums up this sentiment:

Lack Of Internet Skills A Barrier To Progress At Work I would guess this really depends on what your job entails, but a new survey has found that many people who lack internet "skills" feel that it has held them back at work. There are plenty of jobs where I would assume it would be a requirement that you know how to use the internet, while there are plenty of others where it shouldn't matter one way or the other. Also, I imagine this problem will begin to decrease over time as a new generation of workers shows up who were brought up on the internet. Of course, then we'll find out that a lack of "mobile phone text messaging" or some other random tech skill will be holding people back at work. These are all skills that can be picked up with a little bit of effort. If people think they need them to advance in their job, isn't it their responsibility to learn these skills? You make yourself employable by keeping up-to-date. [via Techdirt]

I say, "Get with the Program!".

Amazon RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are everywhere, and they are changing the Web landscape fast. The Web is shifting from distributed freeform database, to distributed semi-structured database.

Amazon.com RSS Feeds They never got around to it, so we set up 160+ separate RSS channels for darn near every type of product on Amazon.com for you. If you have any feedback for this new (free) service, please let us know immediately! We're looking to make it an outstanding and permanent part to your collection. Enjoy! (Chris) [via Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]

Your Web Site is gradually becoming a database (what?). Yes, your Web Site needs to be driven by database software that can rapidly create RSS feeds for your organizations non XML and XML data sources. Your web site needs to provide direct data access to  users, bots, Web Services.

Here is my blog database for instance, you can query the XML data in this database using XQuery, XPath, and Web Services (if I decide to publish any of my XML Query Templates as Web Services).

Note the teaser here, each XML document is zero bytes! This is becuase these are live Virtuoso SQL-XML documents that are producing a variety of XML documents on the fly, which means that they retain a high degree of sensitivity to changes in the underlying databases supplying the data.  I could have chosen to make these persistent XML docs with interval based synchronization with the backen data sources (but I chose not to for maximum effect).

As you can see SQL and XML (Relational and Hierarchical Models) engines can co-exist in a single server, ditto Object-Relational (which might be hidden from view but could be used in the SQL that serves the SQL-XML docs), ditto Full Text (see the search feature of this blog) and finally, ditto directed graph model for accessing my RDF data.(more on this as the RDF data pool increases).