db4o as webservice DB

Quite recently I came across an interesting blog post suggesting that db4o could be used to implement a web service database. As Tetyana Loskutova (a colleague of mine) had been writing about .NET remoting and she is a db4o expert I decided to point her to this blog post (I thought she might come up with some ideas).

Well, I was surprised to see that she quickly came up with a working example based on the blog post under discussion. You can read her article "Using a Database Over a Webservice" here; it's definitely worth it! (Also available here through CodeProject.com)

Here I quote the initial paragraphs:

"It is just one more way to realize a remote persistence.

In fact, putting any database on a web-server and providing a remote user interface to it, will realize the same idea from a user point of view. The interesting point of this solution is in the fact that no extra interface is developed, actually database interface is just transferred over the network.

This realization is possible due to the simple object-oriented interface provided by db4o database.

A possible implementation can be in providing personal web-based databases for remote
customers. Assuming that each user will use only one and his own database, this solution seems to be viable, providing the data is personally encrypted and unique database names are used."

Enjoy!

New db4o Eclipse plug-in under development

I'm glad to announce that Chris Beams is working on an updated Eclipse plug-in for db4o (the former is here). This will allow db4o developers to use the latest version of db4o integrated on the Eclipse platform.
If you want to help with the project contact him or me directly.

The source code is hosted on Google code:
http://code.google.com/p/db4o-eclipse

Chris also set up a mailing list here:
http://groups.google.com/group/db4o-eclipse

For more information see his blog post.

Enjoy!

db4o + Scala

For those of you wondering whether the open source object database db4o can be used with Scala check this blog post by N.Chime:

http://northernchime.blogspot.com/2007/05/db4o-and-scala.html

Scala is a general purpose programming language that integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages and runs on top of a Java VM.

On this article you can find real examples on how to handle Scala objects with db4o! And according to the author there's more to come...

Google + Amazon = Googlezon?

My friend Victor blogged about a futuristic and interesting video showing the future of blogging, on-line news and content customization by 2015. Check it out here (subtitles in Spanish):



Do you think this is a plausible future?

(This video, which is a new version of this one, was created by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson)

Apache Lucene GData server uses db4o

db4o has been incorporated as a persistence component into the Apache Lucene GData server project!

As some of you might already know GData is the Google Data API which aims to provide a simple standard protocol for reading and writing data on the web (using either of two standard XML-based syndication formats: Atom or RSS). While Lucene GData Server is an extensible syndication format server with full text search based on Apache Lucene.

The range of operational area for this technology is huge: basically any information which can be displayed and/or organized as xml can be served on a GData server and, on top of that, the server makes all the content searchable with customized index / search schema.

Generally spoken GData provides a general interface to make information available even beyond a browser context by providing a single API that could be used to query, update, and index structured data anywhere on the web.

Could GData become a simple and open replacement for all the proprietary communications protocols currently in use by database vendors?