vendredi 13 juin 2003

OSCOM 3 Report: Mike Olson Note: Instead of one big OSCOM 3 trip report, I'll break it up into installments, keyed on the people I met. This snippet is about Sleepycat, Zope, and XML. I was quite excited to hear that Mike Olson from Sleepycat was coming to OSCOM 3 for a panel discussion. First, I'm a big fan of the company and their approach to business. Also, the very first computer Rob and I bought when starting the company, way back in early 94, was a Gateway 486 with BSDi 1.0 on it. That was the best, most reliable computer we ever had. Over the years, Zope has started to leverage Berkeley DB more and more. I think that Barry and Jim now consider Berkeley to be the best ZODB storage for demanding applications. I wanted to learn more from Mike about the company, but specifically about Berkeley DB XML, aka the Holy Grail (my nickname, not theirs). I first saw Mike during Tony Byrne's business talk. I was running the microphones for the audience, so I took a moment to tell everybody who Mike was and encouraged them to speak to him during the conference. Which was disingenuous, as I was angling to have lunch with him. :^) The next day we went to lunch with Scott from AbstractEdge. I talked more with Mike about Zope and particularly about Plone. I wanted to focus in on Tony's point that Zope's ZODB scares some people in the mainstream. What would it mean to have a "native" XML storage that could be read/written to from other languages? Alas, we didn't have enough time to go in depth. Mike invited me to find some guys to come visit them in the Bay Area and go in depth into the details. I'm neither in the Bay Area, nor remotely smart enough to participate. :^) So, if you're reading this, and are interested in the topic of Zope, XML, and databases, drop me a line. 10:27:32 AM   comment []

Trip Report: Locarn On June 6, Gaëtan Bourgé from Algomas (here in Rennes) took me to Locarn, a city in Brittany to the west of here. The Institute there was having a seminar on open source. At the end, I gave a 20 minute version of the standard open source business models talk. Quite an enjoyable trip. And useful as well. I met several people that I hope to see more of in the coming year. 10:15:05 AM   comment []