Virtual (i.e. federated) database, anyone?

Post #107,181 by tseliot 6/24/03 8:31:11 PM Reply	Virtual (i.e. federated) database, anyone? It seems to me like this would be a primary candidate for the Open Source developer community, but pickings are slim. I say "primary candidate" because it just might put the database firmly into the "commodity" category, finally. The database vendors won't as a rule develop this tech (so why is IBM in it?), because it cuts out yet another lock-in tool they've used for years. ..anyone know of projects in the works? Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #107,197 by boxley 6/24/03 11:27:01 PM Reply	define a database is it an indexable archive of information or is it an archive of line items, one is searchable to the infinite progression the other is searchable to the original documention, indexed. To me the database of the future will include calls to open the 3rd party blob and grep on instances of search. So select * from foo where foo:blob:*\|grep nodename will work on a Domino webbase that contains spreadsheet, word processing and other datasources. When hitting such a blob a corba call could call an orb and extent such info as much as possible and report it to the query. A database would have to recognise the blob, decide which entrant to use for maximum effectiveness, extract and parse the nescessary data and would enhance the use of opensource greatly. copyrighted June 21st 2003 thanx. bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] questions, help? [link\|mailto:pappas@catholic.org\|email pappas at catholic.org] As the Poets have mournfully sung. Death takes the innocent young, The rolling in money, the screamingly funny, And those who are very well hung. W.H. Auden
Post #107,198 by ben_tilly 6/24/03 11:42:15 PM Reply	What do you mean? For instance would something like Google qualify? Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #107,207 by tseliot 6/25/03 1:55:48 AM Reply	No; "federated" as in "diverse stores". cf IBM's work (Xperanto): [link\|http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/techarticle/0203haas/0203haas.html\|http://www7b.softwar...aas/0203haas.html] or an article on it: [link\|http://www.dbasupport.com/oracle/news/war.shtml\|http://www.dbasuppor...le/news/war.shtml] Seems to me, it's a market which has been left to the DB vendors to "roll into" their own product, so that one of the big DB's still ends up being the "primary" database (and developers will then continue to code to proprietary DB interfaces). The only other players I've seen close to this space are e.g. Crystal Reports and its clones, but AFAIK that's read-only. I got to thinking about it lately because I have a number of projects in mind which will benefit from multiple database options, but would be miraculous applications if they could mix-and-match multiple data stores; not just for per-object fetch-and-update behavior (which would be easy enough to achieve with proper subclassing), but JOINs across multiple stores. I understand the largest complaint has always been the performance hit, but it'd be fun to try. And I don't see why it couldn't be done outside of major $R&D labs--it seems to me to require 1) database connectors, which are a-dime-a-dozen, and 2) clever cursor management. Just wondering if I'm at all on the right track, and especially if it's been done and just isn't googling to the surface. :) Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #107,245 by orion 6/25/03 11:33:19 AM Reply	In other words you mean that there are different data sources that are accessed via one query? One Sybase server, one Oracle server, one MS SQL Server, and one MySQL server, but "SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE INACTIVE = FALSE" will pull results from all of them and be contained in one big recordset. Or am I reading it wrong? "I wonder how much of this BS Corporations will continue to shallow before they start looking into alternatives to Microsoft software?" -[link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=106839\|Orion]
Post #107,252 by tseliot 6/25/03 11:52:42 AM Reply	You're reading it right. Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #107,248 by admin 6/25/03 11:39:43 AM Reply	I've seen some... But I can't remember the vendors. 3 or 4 years ago, there were some products that presented a unified view of disparate data sources. We were looking into them for use with the AS/400 and Sybase stores we had at the time. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."

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