Posts tagged as: database
Switching from a relational to a microcontent model
Posted on Wednesday, November 30, 2005
at 7:15 PM (permalink)
For the past week I've been writing about data structures and microcontent here, and planning the database architecture for my new Ruby-based blog code on my Ruby blog. It's interesting how two different streams of thought can influence each other. I've been building relational database applications since 1981, and I'm now thinking about the ways that a microcontent database model would affect a web-based application.
The basic difference between the relational and the microcontent model is flexibility and variability. A good relational database is designed with three things in mind: speed, speed, and speed. That means streamlining everything in terms of consistency. While relational databases can be modified relatively easily in terms of physical arrangement of data between files, trying to add a completely new data type can take some serious programming, and trying to adapt to a new data structure during run-time sounds suicidal.
If you want to buy into the microcontent model of individual packets of information, each of which can have different types of data, then you need to move to an object-based database, in which each item can have a unique internal structure. It is most likely that developers will use relational databases for quite some time to handle microcontent, but this will change as they start thinking about flows of individual data items instead of a structured set of normalized data tables.
Of course, someone will have to do the hard work of making a fast microcontent database. I'll be evaluating new object, xml-based, databases in the future. Oh boy, sounds like fun!
Seeing a website as an RSS feed
Posted on Sunday, November 20, 2005
at 8:33 PM (permalink)
I've been thinking about rebuilding the architecture and some of the design of this site to adopt to tags and XML. I'm starting to see the site as a large feed reader for my own content. The intruiging part is that if I rebuild this site to work directly off of my RSS feed then it will work on anyone's feed. The site becomes simply a database app for a standard type of data. I've always thought as websites as the result of database programs, but the more I grok RSS as a delivery and storage mechanism the more opportunities I see for working with it as the core architectural structure rather than an export or import protocol. Hopefully these ideas will become more clear as I build the next iteration of this site.
Everyone has their own Googlebase
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2005
at 8:30 AM (permalink)
The initial reaction in the blogosphere is very different from mine. Most people are reacting to the mere fact that Google has a "database," and filtering it through their personal view of Google, Ebay, Microsoft, etc. Few are actually looking at how it works, and the ones who do often say that they are intimidated. Dude! have you ever SEEN a database?
One problem, which Bosworth may have realized more than I, is that today's end-users may actually be less application savvy than even the average user in 1985. Many of them, especially bloggers, even A-list bloggers, use the computer purely as a communication and publishing device. They are extremely adept at IM, blogging, email, IRC, and even the new areas like tags, but they probably have no reason to use Excel, and I wonder how many users under the age of 25 have ever seen Access or any other database of similar complexity.
I'm not proclaiming the dumbing down of the average computer user, just the shifting of their experience to text oriented, social interactions. So are they ready for the type of database I want? Will they ever be? Surely if we have to start with tags and work our way back up to even flat files, which are still way beyond the capability of Googlebase, this is going to be a long education process. But there are still going to be application developers. Will they be solely professionals? Will we not see a new wave of user-developers emerge on the web as we saw during the PC revolution?
I still think Googlebase has to become much more, and that they realize it. For example, to drive the Google maps API, which is red-hot right now, you need a list of locations. Surely they understand that that list should be stored in Googlebase. So they must be planning to deliver the ability to store and manage lists. Which means they must deliver the capability of a flat file database at a minimum.
On the other hand
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2005
at 8:05 AM (permalink)
What if Googlebase isn't a database attached to the Google service, an online version of Access? What if it is just a database designed to post and manage Google search entries? Maybe I misread their intentions. I think I misread their ambitions. A Google entry form is just a glorified submit page. Even if it does take bulk submits, more on that later, it still is just a submit mechanism. On the other hand if it actually is a submit mechanism for search, the SEOs are going to be going out of their minds right now. I better spend some time wth their blogs. And of course, John Battelle's.
This is not Googlebase
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2005
at 7:37 AM (permalink)
This is not Googlebase. This is not a beta. This is not an alpha. This is not an app. This is a screen show. This will be the most actively tested and documented screen show in software history.
I can't blame them for wanting to put something up, but this will not help them. If they leave this up for a long time, people will dismiss it. If they keep dribbling out features like this, people will get angry. I'm already getting angry thinking about wasting time describing what is up now.
My best podcast was with Adam Bosworth describing why Reflex failed and Access didn't. He is too wise to get himself in this type of situation. Yet he apparently has.
Googlebase, Googlebase, Googlebase!
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2005
at 7:19 AM (permalink)
It's up. This has to be the first time the launch of a database has gotten people excited since Microsoft Access, another Bosworth effort. I can't wait until Adam is allowed to talk about this. That will be enough to get me podcasting again. (via Alex Barnet)
We need to start the feature race over again
Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2005
at 10:05 AM (permalink)
There have been lots of predictions of online versions of desktop apps. What has been missing is a valid justification for people to move from Microsoft Office to an online set of apps. One unrecognized benefit will be the restarting of the feature race all over again. I just set up a new copy of Quicken so I could help my mother with her checkbook and the level of complexity is overwhelming. I just wanted to do simple checkbook balancing but the software acts as if I want to set up my own online brokerage house. I had the same experience the other day when I started building the system to manage this blog. I'm coding it myself with FoxPro at first and then I'll move it to MySQL and probably Ruby. All I wanted to start with was a simple flat file database of my posts, but FoxPro, Access and all the other supposedly end-user databases were so feature rich that I was faced with studying manuals just to create a form to add and edit records. A new generation of web based apps will have to start at the beginning of the feature curve and maybe some of them will stay simple enough to be used by non-power users. I don't mind programming and I like lots of features when I need them, but the current packaged software model requires publishers to constantly add features until they can do everything every competitor does. Hopefully the web model for apps will allow for different levels of complexity.
Does the word "Base" give you a hint?
Posted on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
at 11:44 AM (permalink)
Am I the only one who sees GoogleBase as an online database? You know, like Access only on the web. The blogosphere and the MSM are rushing to describe it as competition for Ebay and Craigslist in offering a free site for classified ads, and that probably is part of Google's plan. But I've known Adam Bosworth for more than 20 years, and he is a database guy through and through. It can't be a coincidence that he started working for Google almost a year before GoogleBase made its first appearance. The only blogger I've seen who has recognized the possibility of GoogleBase becoming a standard end-user database has been Om Malik, and he assumes that since Quickbase wasn't a success GoogleBase will also fail to attract an audience. He failed to mention that Quickbase sucks. The performance is unacceptable and the functionality is weak. I can't believe Bosworth would make those mistakes. The acceptance of online apps is also much greater now than when Qucikbase appeared. We'll have to wait until it appears, but I think a fast end-user database with large amounts of storage and a good API could become a significant part of the web services infrastructure.
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