SF Park

The new SF skatepark is pretty rad. It is growing on me. Here is some footy of parker I took on my point-and-shoot. This park is crowded. Note near collision with fat kid on bike (listen for the yell).

Read-End....

It doesn't seem to bother anyone else in the office that when you place a page on the copy machine, and hit the big green "copy" button, that this message appears:



READ-END? WTF is READ-END? This copy machine can send emails, but they can't just make it copy a page when you hit the green button?

Steve's Feedback on our UI

lots of issues with the "new user" concept. First time someone signs in have obvious links to getting started guide, creating a sample database, etc.

"import" has too much meaning to db guys. Make it say "create a sample database from template" WITH data.

"must match regex in" in tablename is not a good error message for invalid table names.

Suggested "nextdb for SQL database programmers".

Wants to know how to create the primary key.

Some kind of wizard to drive first time users.

tooltips on tabs with check box for "never show this again"

consider changing the query language parameter names and datatype names to 'human friendly' equivalents.

Steve would like to be able to set the default value.

wants to be able to use camel case in column names

relation name should be "relationship name". It also upper cases it.

show lines connecting related tables as an option.

thought he could not enter a query without having data.

did not like the interface for adding data.

wants a "data editor" tab along the top (loads table names along left hand side)

wants column types to be in parentheses.

Steve wants to be able to store HTML and edit it with a foldout editor. I want permalinks to the HTML and JS.

Great idea

trouble executing query with join

no way to relate rows

wants excel spreadsheet

wants a way to get his data out.

"You wouldn't want a mashup for your bank account."

I am watching the opening panel discussion at Mashup Camp. Hart Rossman, CTO at SAIC just said "You wouldn't want a mashup for your bank account."



That really struck a chord because it captures the inadequacy with today's mashup security model. In fact, building a banking system on NextDB is sort of the logical extent of where the NextDB SURID technology can go.

Another interesting statement from one of the panelists:

"SLAs can't be that strong because you can't have really strong remedies."
I agree.

"you're not going to get a new CRM system out of a mashup."

I disagree. Once the database is secure and mashable, the entire application software development lifecycle can be handled by mashups.

The proverbial Map Mashup came up again as a proof point for time savings.

"when the users become the developers, they are doing what they want to do, not what IT wants to do"

The discussion briefly touched on whether or not Amazon Web Services (S3) constitutes a mashup. That's really a point that requires discussion. Once you realize that Amazon Web Services is not Mashable, due to its "web 1.0 security model", you find yourself somewhat dissapointed.

"where we run into a real challenge is in converting the mashup mentality into the largescale systems engineering skillset. You don't see a lot of folks puting a large ampount of skill and discipline into building the backend." paraphrasing what he said later: We're going to see things going in that direction though, and it will drive Mashups into the enterprise.

Mashup Camp 2008

Tomorrow is Mashup Camp! I'm excited about this year's Mashup Camp because I think there is going to be a lot of activity around trying to figure out how to fuse mashups with Cloud Computing. And that, of course, is exactly where NextDB.net has a sweet spot. NextDB is fundamentally a mashable relational database in the cloud. What does that mean for the programmer? It means NextDB is the ONLY relational database that you can securely mashup, without have to write ANY serverside code.

So check this out. I added this "guest book" to my blog to keep track of folks I meet at Mashup Camp. This guestbook is a Mashup with NextDB.net, which makes it a nice little example of a database mashup between NextDB and blogger.com. Originally, Brent wrote this guestbook as an example for our talk at ajaxworld. I just went to his page, grabbed the html, js, and css and threw them into my blog. The only tricky part was that blogger.com's editor didn't like newline characters in the HTML and CSS. So I just saved them in a file without newlines, and pasted them back to my blog. Go ahead and sign in below, and watch the AJAX goodness! Here is a link to the JavaScript that the guestbook sources. Rather than use the nasty editor at blogger.com (and its associated issues with spaces), I just uploaded the js file to Project Path, which is a nifty collaboration site that allows file hosting.

Mashup Camp Guestbook

first name * last name * email comments Enter the text above into the box below. Click image to get a new one if you can't read it.

json view:

NextDB At AjaxWorld 2008 West

Brent and I recently presented about NextDB.net at AjaxWorld 2008 West, in San Jose CA.

I am going to pickup blogging a bit more regularly here. Anyway, the presentation went well. The message we hammered on was that NextDB has a fundamentally new security model that allows a hosted relational database to be exposed as a service. NextDB is the only relational database that is built from the ground up as a AJAX-programmable hosted service. As such, the round-trip security model is native; fundamentally "built in". This clearly differentiates NextDB from other pseudo-database or database services, because you can safely access it directly from JavaScript.

New York Family Vacation 2008

Times Square

Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular stage