“JCR or RDBMS” Whitepaper

One of my coworkers found this great paper by Bertil Chapuis and Day software comparing JCR and RDBMS. The paper outlines the theoretical approaches of each technology in details and provides an excellent foundation to make a more educated decision about which technology to use for a specific problem.

Day Software AG (Day) led the development of a JAVA specification which defines a uniform application programming interface (API) to manage content. This specification is called content repository API for java (JCR) and is part of the java community process. Implementations of this specification are actually provided by well known companies such as Oracle, Day or Alfresco.

JCR implementations are often used to build high level content management systems and collaborative applications. Day also provides an open source implementation of the specification which is called Jackrabbit and which is used as a shell for some of its products.

This diploma thesis takes place in this context. Day wants to clarify some points which relate to the data model promoted by their specification. The basic idea is to compare their approach to managing content with the approach promoted by competitors at different levels. The following sections will clarify the approach adopted to do this and give an overview of the content developed in this report.

As explained, the purpose is to locate JCR in the database world. This work will be done by comparing the relational model and the model promoted by JCR. The relational model defined by Codd in the 70’s is actually the most widely used data model. The unstructured or semi-structured model subtended by the JCR specification encounter a growing success in the content management area. These two models will be described and analyzed in this report.

Read More >>

Death of the Soasaurus

I’ve been meaning to post this link for a while but haven’t gotten around to it. The article makes the very apt point that massive and invasive SOA implementations have failed most folks and that a more pragmatic lightweight approach might just be the thing. Thankfully the article didn’t use the totally overhyped “agile” buzzword.

Follow this to the actual article.

Interwoven Acquired

Interwoven announced to be acquired by Autonomy today. I’m not sure I really care, unless this means they finally they get rid of Perl scripts in their product. The interesting thing is that most of the big CMS vendors now got absorbed by larger companies, which should — in my eyes — hopefully open up the market for smaller and more interesting niche and open source vendors.

Microsoft Slashes Jobs

The first thing I read this morning was an e-mail by Steve Ballmer in my inbox, stating that Microsoft had announced a $16.6 billion quarterly revenue, $900 million short of what was expected. Luckily the actions are not quite as drastic as the loss of 15.000 jobs that had been rumored on the internet, yet this is the painful reminder that the economy is really in bad shape. I feel like I cannot complain too much about spending 4 hours in the car each day to get to my project at Dow Jones right now.

As part of the process of adjustments, we will eliminate up to 5,000 positions in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, of which 1,400 will occur today. We’ll also open new positions to support key investment areas during this same period of time. Our net headcount in these functions will decline by 2,000 to 3,000 over the next 18 months. In addition, our workforce in support, consulting, operations, billing, manufacturing, and data center operations will continue to change in direct response to customer needs.

On a positive note, with the Microsoft shares seeing lows they haven’t since the early 90s, I think the time to go on a stock buying spree is getting closer. Microsoft isn’t going anywhere, their products are running on almost every computer out there.

Happy New Year!

After taking a nice long break, it looks like it’s time to start working again. For me, the holidays weren’t really a break, but a non-stop list of issues with the new house which we still haven’t moved in to.  Home ownership is fun.

Anyhow, I wish everyone a Happy New Year!