Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture

Embarcadero Acquires CodeGear

Karen Lopez - listmistress@Infoadvisors.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:13:53 GMT

Today Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. announced their acquisition of Borland Software's CodeGear development tools, including JBuilder and Delphi C++ Builder.

This $30 million purchase will make Embarcadero the largest independent software company.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080507/tc_infoworld/100309

http://www.forbes.com/businesswire/feeds/businesswire/2008/05/07/businesswire20080507005314r1.html

Greg Keller, VP Products for Embarcadero, blogged about this CodeGear news:

In my 12 years at Embarcadero, I have not felt or seen the excitement at these levels since we were an obscure start up banging out product in a way-to-small space on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. This announcement is a game changer for both Embarcadero and CodeGear…as well as the market itself. In its most abstract sense, Embarcadero and CodeGear together as a single business are like…
1 + 1 = 3
Why? Well, to be frank, the mere exposure of Embarcadero’s database productivity tooling to CodeGear’s developer community and vice versa will be an immediate exposure of technologies across these disciplines increasing productivity on both sides of the ‘fence’. Better yet, all available to them now from one trusted vendor. So, cross-pollinating is good for business and good for the customer to have these choices.

XML - Is it the Answer to All Life's Problems?

Karen Lopez - listmistress@Infoadvisors.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:58:26 GMT

Don Peterson has written an excellent article on SQL Server Central about costs and benefits of using XML. Actually, he has updated a previous article, but his points still work. He original penned these thoughts when XML was the silver bullet buzzword of the day.

The self-documenting nature of XML is often cited as facilitating cross application communication because as humans we can look at an XML file and make reasonable guesses as to the data's meaning based on hints provided by the tags. Also, the format of the file can change without affecting that communication because it is all based on tags rather than position. However, if the tags change, or don't match exactly in the first place the communication will be broken. Remember that, at least for now, computers are very bad at guessing.
Regardless of the specific means used, communication across systems requires two things:

Agreement on what will be sent (what the data means), and
Agreement on a format.

Using XML does not alter this requirement, and despite claims to the contrary, it doesn't make it any easier. In order to effect communication between systems with a text file, both the sender and receiver must agree in advance on what data elements will be sent (by extension, this mandates that the meaning of each attribute is defined), and the position of each attribute in the file. When using XML each element must be defined and the corresponding tags must be agreed upon. Note that tags in and of themselves are NOT sufficient to truly describe the data and its meaning, which of necessity includes the business rules that govern the data's use unless a universal standard is created to define the appropriate tag for every possible thing that might be described in an XML document and that standard is rigorously adhered to.

I can remember sitting in meetings where XML was positioned as:

The end of programming as we know it
The end of data modeling as we know it
The answer to every data management problem ever faced
The end of RDBMS's
The answer to every performance problem we'd ever faced (WHAT?)
The end of data integration problems.

I do use XML, nearly daily, but I never understood all the hoop-la about it. First, the concept is really simple, for the most part. Second, I didn't understand (and still don't) how it solves any integration problems at all. The hard part about data integration is agreement on what each piece of data means. Simply throwing a tag (label) around a piece of data doesn't do much. Even giving it some very rudimentary datatypes is less meaningful than what we normally do with data models.

I definitely see the value in using XML for certain technical solutions. I've even specified and architected such solutions. But I haven't see the light of XML being the answer to almost every IT problem.

Peterson's article addresses these points and more. I'd love to see your take on his positions...and to hear what your responses are when you are told something about the magical properties of tags and XML.

Metacrap in the Metautopia - a Snarky Look at Meta Data

Karen Lopez - karen@Infoadvisors.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:22:22 GMT

Cory Doctorow is an activist, a writer, a blogger, a public speaker, and a technology person. He writes science fiction normally. He is also on the masthead of Wired, Popular Science, and MAKE. He freelances for the New York Times and Salon.

I found a great web article of his about Metacrap in the Metautopia. I think it is spot on.

If everyone would subscribe to such a system and create good metadata for the purposes of describing their goods, services and information, it would be a trivial matter to search the Internet for highly qualified, context-sensitive results: a fan could find all the downloadable music in a given genre, a manufacturer could efficiently discover suppliers, travelers could easily choose a hotel room for an upcoming trip.
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities.
2. The problems
There are at least seven insurmountable obstacles between the world as we know it and meta-utopia.

If you have read any of my writings, you know that I love snarky writing. Take a couple of minutes to check out his rant.