Kingsley Idehen's Blog Data Space

Microsoft's New Mantra: 'It Just Works'

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:44:04 GMT

So doesn't Windows work right now? Not quite so (until next year sometime) according to this Fortune Magazine article. Ironically, Apple have always assumed "It should just work", and when it comes to their technology (software or hardware) at the very least they assume "it does work".

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 :-(

The Invisibility of Knowledge Work

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 20:16:46 GMT

Here is an interesting from Enterprise Systems Journal by Jim McGee titled: The Invisibility of Knowledge Work.

Here is a an interesting and insightful quote from the article that resonates with me:

Invisibility is an accidental and little-recognized characteristic of digital knowledge work. Seeing the problem is the first step to a solution. While better technology tools will play an important role, the next steps are changes in attitude and behavior at the individual and work group level. For example, organizing your own digital files into project-related directories can help, but not if you continue to name files "FinalPresentationNN.doc" where NN is some number between 1 and 15 representing a crude effort at version control. Embed more information in the file name where you know it will be visible even as you e-mail it around the organization. Use more informative subject lines on your email. Those file names and subject lines should provide the best clues possible as to what will be found inside.

The quote above strikes a chord with me because I have spent a majority of my professional career working on technology that is aimed at Information and Knowledge workers. It also has uncanny timing as it sheds light on a major aspect of the next major release of Virtuoso that aims to continue the process of unveiling the intrinsic value of Unified Storage (SQL, XML, and Multimedia content) for Knowledge workers.

We are already experiencing a rapid build up of XML content and binary data with XML based metadata annotations as a result of the network effects of the Blogosphere and Wikisphere. This content explosion ultimately provides context for understanding the value of URIs association with collections of physically (e.g hierarchical directory structure) or logically (Tagging or Dynamic Filtering) partitioned content.

To be continued..

The Skype Economy

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 20:14:53 GMT

The Skype Economy Do you have a product or a platform? More and more companies are recognizing that the real route to success is not to offer a product, but a platform on which other products are offered. With that in mind, we're seeing more and more products that are building up strong and active development communities that make their initial offering more useful and valuable to buyers. Recently there have been articles about the ecosystem of companies who provide enhancements for the iPod, and now some are recognizing that Skype is moving into similar territory. Of course, the risk for companies or developers who build on these newer platforms is that they're totally beholden to the provider -- and that puts them at risk. They have no control over the environment they're working in. Skype could decide to build the same functionality themselves. Or, other products could become more popular than Skype. Sometimes it works... but many companies don't realize the danger of putting all their eggs in one basket. If they pick the right platform, it can be lucrative for a while, but it's not always easy to know who's going to win. [via Techdirt]

If the underlying platform is standards based then there is some protection (you can switch platform wholesale or a segment within the platform), otherwise, it's a count down to the inevitable. Any platform provider that isn't standards based (where standards exist in their realm), will always attack ersthwhile partners as part of its growth needs. This is a consistent and time-proven industry pattern.

IBM Flexes XML Muscle

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:18:36 GMT

Here is another article titled "IBM Flexes XML Muscle" that covers the same general theme: IBM's appreciation of Unified Storage.

As indicated in an earlier post: IBM is clearly validating what we have done with Virtuoso (as was the case initially with their Virtual / Federated DBMS initiative ala DB2 Integrator). Here is an excerpt from today's eWeek article supporting this position:

To achieve maximum XML performance, bolstered indexing attributes in the technology will enable advanced search functions and a higher degree of filtering. IBM is also adding support for XPath and XQuery data models. This will allow users to create views that involve SQL and XQuery by sending the protocol through DB2's query optimizer for a unified query plan.

Read on..

Virtuoso has been doing this since 2000; unfortunately a lot of

Oct 2004 State of the Blogosphere: Corporate Bloggers

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 12:19:00 GMT

Oct 2004 State of the Blogosphere: Corporate Bloggers

This is part 4 of a series on the growth of the Blogosphere, its impact on individuals, corporations, media, politics, and technology, Part 1 covered the overall growth of the blogosphere, part 2 covered the volume of postings, and part 3 covered the growing influence that bloggers are having, and compared them to the online presences of traditional mainstream media.

Today I'll discuss a small but influential segment of bloggers - Corporate Bloggers. These are people who blog in an official or semi-official capacity at a company, or are so affiliated with the company where they work that even though they are not officially spokespeople for the company, they are clearly affiliated. For example, the folks in SAP's developers program get blogs if they want them, and are available to anyone who joins the (free) SAP developers network. This group also includes folks at Sun Microsystems and at Microsoft, where employees are actively encouraged to blog.

The chart above (click on it to see a larger version) shows some of the organizations that are at the forefront of the corporate blogging wave. In addition to the big corporate names and the bloggers at companies involved in the blogging space, there are a large number of individual consultants, small business owners, and individual CxO bloggers - about 3,000 that we have identified as of October 2004 - which fill the "other" category. These are folks who are blogging about what is going on at their businesses, but either because of the small number of people at the business, or the small number of bloggers at the individual business, we aggregated them into a single category.

Even though some of the largest technology companies are represented in this graph, to me this shows that we are still at the relative start of accepted use of blogging as a part of corporate policy - and that there is still a tremendous opportunity for forward-thinking companies and management to have a significant positive impact on their public perception by encouraging an enlightened blogging policy, encouraging openness both within and outside of the organization.

[via Sifry's Alerts]

XML Lets Loose the Data Stream

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 19:47:03 GMT

I just read a

What is the platform?

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 16:31:14 GMT

I came across an interesting piece by Adam Bosworth titled "What is the platform?"

Apple Repeating Past Mistakes?

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 21:27:58 GMT

I came across an interesting piece today (albeit somewhat belated in blog-time)

Note to MSDN: make friends with the Lazy Web

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 22:46:30 GMT

Here is yet another angle (on my earlier post) on what can be unravelled when one digs closer into what is happening with IE, the Web, and Microsoft's perpetual (it seems), struggles with

Web E-Mail: The New Hard Disk

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 22:38:19 GMT

Web E-Mail: The New Hard Disk

..

If this "Internet Operating System" and Web 2.0 stuff is really happening, I think I've just found the filesystem we'll all be using--in one form or another.

[via Jeremy Zawodny's blog]

Dare Obsanjo's advice re. responding to Jon Udell's WinFS piece.

Thu, 10 Jun 2004 21:56:04 GMT

A refreshing response from Dare, to an insightful post.

Jon Udell has

Gates touts the merits of blogs in speech to CEOs

Fri, 21 May 2004 20:16:52 GMT

Gates touts the merits of blogs in speech to CEOs Bill Gates didn't announce plans for his own Web log yesterday, but in a speech to top corporate executives, he extolled the virtues of the online journals and related technologies.

[via Lockergnome's Tech News Watch]

Preventable SQL DBMS Vulnerabilities

Tue, 18 May 2004 00:42:08 GMT

Here are some excerpts (inlined) with my comments (outlined) from an interesting article on SQL DBMS exploits and vulnerabilities by Aaron C. Newman, for DB2 Magazine titled "6 Security Secrets Attackers don't want You To Know".

How secure is your data? Looking at your information management resources through a would-be intruder's eyes can help you find (and fix) vulnerabilities.

Naturally :-)

When E. F. Codd developed his relational data model in 1970, the business world was a different place. Almost 35 years after his seminal work appeared, RDBMSs that sprung from Codd's ideas are the standard for storing corporate information. And, with government and industry regulations dictating what kinds of information companies have to store, manage, and audit (and for how long), protecting this information is more important than ever. Unfortunately, it's also more challenging

Even in 1985, when Dr. Codd published 12 guidelines for RDBMSs, there was little concern for data security. In those days, gaining access to a database was so difficult that advanced security features on the database were irrelevant.

Today, RDBMSs carry the lifeblood of every organization. Note the use of the plural: Organizations now have many databases that are decentralized in terms of use and security controls. E-business demands that data access be extended to customers, partners, suppliers, and other parties who were rarely considered in the early data management days. With all this availability ? not to mention pressure from an array of government and industry regulations (see the sidebar, "Security and Compliance") ? the need to control exactly who can access or modify data is becoming paramount.

Absolute facts, that are still partially understood at best. For instance we are still in a so called "Information Age" in which standards based data access remains an issue of contempt instead of absolute necessity.

There are a number of prevailing myths about standards based data access that continue to cloak reality:

ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OLEDB all deliver poor performance (compared to their native, proprietary, and database specific counterparts; native interfaces)
You can't really right generic database applications with these standards due to inconsistencies in the DBMS implementations of SQL (not true! there are many aspects of the specs that address these concerns if only a majority of driver vendors would implement these features, and the application developers actually used them by seeking drivers with full implementations).

Even if the above were true (which I refute strongly), how about the general security vulnerabilities that affect both Native, and Standards compliant, data access interfaces?

Aaron's article does a good job of highlighting 6 areas of vulnerability:

DBMS Defaults (usernames and passwords)
Authentication (at connect time)
Database Privileges
Fixpaks
Buffer Overflows
SQL Injection

What I have been able to do very quickly (thanks to blogging, and the power of a blog engine that supports WebDAV), is write a tabulated response to each of the items (bar Fixpaks) indicating how the OpenLink Multi-Tier Data Access Drivers (for ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, and OLEDB) protect corporate databases from each of these vulnerabilities.

To cut a long story short, we are increasingly living a contradiction where the terms "simple" and "free" are supposed to lead us to products that can adequately handle the challenges of an increasingly sophisticated grid of inter-connecting point.

I have been asked on numerous occassions, "How can you build a company and business based on data access technology?". My reply is the same as usual, "because everything comes down to data". If the data is compromised in anyway, then kiss Information, Knowledge, and everything else goodbye!

Macromedia Brings Flash to the Enterprise

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 19:45:16 GMT

XML based generation of Rich and Native UI's is gathering momentum, it might also be a point to understand the complimentary relationship that exists between XForms and these XML based GUI generators.

BTW - Here is a great XForms presentation that helps aids in the contextualization of my prior comments.

The actual Macromedia MXML (Flex) review by Jon Udell follows:

After a decade of web-style development, I'm sold on the idea of using markup languages to describe the layouts of user interfaces and to coordinate the event-driven code that interconnects widgets and binds them to data. The original expression of that model was HTML and JavaScript, but variations have flourished. Mozilla-based applications have been using XUL (XML User Interface Language) for years. The Laszlo Presentation Server uses a description language called LZX. Microsoft has previewed XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) for Longhorn.

Now comes MXML (Macromedia Flex Markup Language), the latest development in Macromedia's ongoing quest to reposition the near-ubiquitous Flash player as a general-purpose presentation engine for rich Internet applications. With XML markup at its core, Flex is inherently IDE- friendly, and Macromedia has two IDE initiatives underway. One, code-named Brady, builds on Dreamweaver MX. The other, code-named Partridge, leverages Eclipse.

Full Review: http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/29/13TCflex_1.html

Also see XML for UI Languages: http://xml.coverpages.org/userInterfaceXML.html

Nothing stops any of the engines mentioned above (proprietary user interfaces as per the diagram below)

MySQL Adjusts Licensing for LAMP and similar communities

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:20:00 GMT

Here