On The Margins

Saturday July 19, 2008

[ Code ] ACM Queue Magazine

Craig Russell (of Sun Microsystems Inc.) has written the lead article of ACM Queue special issue on object relational mapping (ORM): "Bridging the Object-Relational Divide". The opening sentence provides the motivation most succinctly: "Modern applications are built using two very different technologies: object-oriented programming for business logic; and relational databases for data storage."

2008-07-19 21:19:27.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases object-oriented object-relational orm persistence programming software technology

Wednesday July 16, 2008

[ Business ] A Brand

"Brand" comes from old Germanic or Norse word meaning "burn." Animals are branded, demonstrating their ownership, and a commercial brand leaves a lasting impression in a target's mind. In commerce, building a brand value creates a specific investment that cannot be portable easily. Java was separate from SunSoft. Mac brand was not taken to iPod, but the Apple brand infuses both. 

A brand is a promise of satisfaction. It is a sign, a metaphor operating as an unwritten contract between a manufacturer and a consumer, a seller and a buyer, a performer and an audience, an environment and those who inhabit it, an event and those who experience it.

The consumer, buyer, audience, inhabitant, and "experiencer" (all customers) form their own feelings about what a brand means; but they can be influenced—more than most realize—by the advertising and publicity of the manufaacturer, seller, performer, environment, or event (all producers).

Branding is the process of continuous struggle between producers and customers to define that promise and meaning. To paraphrase Karl Marx, people make their own decisions about who to be, how to live, and what to buy, but under circumstances shaped by brands' advertising, marketing, and publicity.

Matthew Healy, What is Branding? (2008)

2008-07-16 11:46:13.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
branding brands products

Friday July 11, 2008

[ Technology ] DTrace Envy

A colleague in our PostgreSQL team just pointed me to a "little" note on DTrace, which seems to be ignited by the work that Robert Lor and Jignesh Shah have been doing. (The PG presentation involving the Mac OS and DTrace is Robert's)

2008-07-11 00:03:02.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases dtrace linux open-source programming solaris technology

Tuesday July 08, 2008

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Get Sun Research

To get Sun Microsystems research papers, turn here.

2008-07-08 17:27:21.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
research sun-microsystems technology

[ Technology ] Using Apache Derby / Java DB with Caroline

Here is another embedded use case for Java DB in a full Java environment: On Grid Derby-based Server. For more on Caroline, see here.

2008-07-08 17:21:00.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
caroline computing distributed grid programming research server software technology

Wednesday June 18, 2008

[ Technology ] PostgreSQL Surveys

PostgreSQL.org community pages contain some interesting surveys.

2008-06-18 00:22:43.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases postgresql software surveys technology

Sunday June 15, 2008

[ Technology ] A PostgreSQL Monitor

Jignesh Shah has implemented a simple PostgreSQL monitor using Netbeans 6.1, which also has facilities to make packaging and distribution of a Java app much easier.

2008-06-15 22:24:14.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases monitor postgresql

[ Society ] Opinions and Social Pressure

Solomon E. Asch's "Opinions and Social Pressure" (Scientific American, Vol 193, No. 5, 1955) was probably one of the best papers I read during an organizational behavior class I took at Haas School of Business during my studies there. (Barry M. Staw has published the paper in his Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behavior. The 2nd edition had the paper, and I'm sure Professor Staw has kept it for his 3rd edition. )

A BBC radio program gives very good summary of the paper and Asch's other research on social pressure and conformity.

The following video (posted on Youtube) presents a summary sense of one of Asch's conformity experiments:

2008-06-15 13:13:06.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
evidence ideas opinion pressure social

Saturday June 14, 2008

[ Persian (فارسی) ] II ‍‍پیروزی II‍‍

2008-06-14 12:54:18.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
پیروزی

Sunday June 08, 2008

[ Work ] Subtle Significance of Job Satisfaction

I quote the following passage from the conclusion to Dennis W. Organ's paper ("The subtle significance of job satisfaction," Clinical Laboratory Management Review, (Jan/Feb 1990) 4, no.1, 94-98):

Management research and theory have taken a long time and a torturous path in catching up with the insights of Chester Barnard. More than half a century ago, Barnard noted the essential condition of the "willingness of persons to contribute efforts to the cooperative system." This quality of willingness "is something different from effectiveness, ability, or value of personal contributions...[it] means self abnegation." Willingness is characterized by "[an] indefinitely large range of variations in its intensity among individuals" and, within individuals, "it cannot be constant in degree." Finally, this "willingness to cooperate, positive or negative, is the expression of net satisfactions and dissatisfactions experienced or anticipated."

Barnard underscored the very nature of organizations as cooperative systems. Rules, structures, policies, job descriptions, sanctions, incentives—they all play necessary roles in collaborative endeavors, but as derivatives of, not substitutes for, the underlying disposition to cooperate. Such a disposition can be sustained only by a sense of organization as a microcosm of a just world. Occasional inequities can be tolerated if there is faith that the system works fairly over the long run, with self-correcting tendencies. When faith leads to a narrowly defined, quid pro quo contractual relationship, the disposition to cooperate ebbs. Surveys show that most of the nation's labor force begins work with a fairly high degree of job satisfaction and that most of the people, most of the time, will describe themselves as "all in all, satisfied." There is a generally prevalent inclination to give the employer the benefit of a doubt—"I'll assume you're treating me fairly until you persuade me otherwise." So the disposition is generally present to render a substantial contribution via OCB [Organizational Citizenship Behavior]. A good-faith effort by managers to provide a "square deal" will do much to ensure the quality of OCB.

2008-06-08 23:04:01.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
business citizenship civility economics psychology sociology work

Tuesday June 03, 2008

[ Design ] MIT Online Courseware

MIT Online Courseware has gotten better and better with time.

2008-06-03 23:02:46.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
courseware education knowledge

Monday June 02, 2008

[ Technology ] Community Statistics for Netbeans Database Usage

"The database support in NetBeans allows users to connect to a database and view and modify the database structure and data. These graphs show which database servers users connect to most often." Of particular note, besides the large usage of MySQL and Oracle, is the large usage of Java DB (Derby), and the significant PostgreSQL usage.

2008-06-02 13:20:38.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases development java javadb mysql netbeans opensource postgresql programming server software technology tools

Sunday June 01, 2008

[ Art (هنر) ] Modern Persian Ceramic and Carpets

A friend sent me a link to an interesting video report on a ceramic exhibition by Iranian women artists posted on Jadid ("new") Online. (Interviewees in the report speak in Persian but you can read the English subtitles which provide pretty good translation.)

Jadid Online's report on carpets by the late Iranian artist, Abolfath Rassam-Arabzadeh, contains an amazing display of his works described by his daughter, Zhila, with a sneak view into the museum and workshop built in his honor in Tehran.

Apparently, a Japanese museum had once offered $11 million for one of Arabzadeh's works containing several scenes from Persian poet Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. 

2008-06-01 11:46:43.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
art ceramics iran persian women

Saturday May 31, 2008

[ Networks ] The tortuous path to Internet research

Oddly, tonight, when I try to find and browse (on my iMac w/ OS-X Leopard) Pew Internet and American Life Project, one of the most credible Internet watchers, using Google Search, I may end up in a place containing a warning that "visiting this web site may harm your computer" or what Google calls a "Malware Warning"—apparently "Google has found that some portion of pewinternet.org/ contains or links to badware or otherwise violates Google's software guidelines."

Now, I used to visit Pew Internet and American Life Project, often, because it has absolutely wonderful papers and research on the use of the Internet.

So, what's all of Google's malware warning about, and what are "Google's software guidelines" which need to be imposed on web sites before Google search would direct the search user to the object of their search, directly and simply?

2008-05-31 01:50:01.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
information internet

Thursday May 22, 2008

[ Technology ] Sun OpenSolaris on Amazon Web Services

Simone Brunozzi writes about availability of OpenSolaris on Amazon Web Services.

2008-05-22 21:31:38.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
cloud-computing internet opensolaris opensource services software solaris technology web web2.0

[ Networks ] PGCon 2008

After two days of PostgreSQL tutorials, several evenings of gatherings and a hackers' meeting, PGCon 2008 sessions began today.

Yesterday, Yahoo did make an important announcement having to do with their leveraging of PostgreSQL source base to build a system to run the largest database in the world. Reports of Yahoo's work can be found at InformationWeek ("Yahoo Claims Record with Petabyte Database") and ComputerWorld ("Size Matters: Yahoo Claims 2-Petabyte Database is the World's Biggest").

I wrote this while sitting in Andrew Sullivan's session on PostgreSQL project management. During Q&A, people discussed how to manage various feature proposals.

I should probably note here that a couple of weeks before the PGCon, we heard about a major US research institution looking into 64 bit PostgreSQL on Solaris for a large astronomy project.

(Note: Sun Microsystems already sells PostgreSQL support for Solaris. You can also learn more about OpenSolaris and databases for OpenSolaris, here.) 

2008-05-22 08:53:11.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases opensource postgresql

Monday May 12, 2008

[ Personal ] 10 Patents

Here are some of my patent applications. Of course, there are other places to look for patent information. Google has a nice patent search interface. So, for example, you can look at my patent number 7,000,228.

2008-05-12 17:44:03.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
inventions

Saturday May 10, 2008

[ Technology ] DTrace Probes for Databases

Robert Lor has listed potential standard DTrace probes for databases and some PostgreSQL-specific probes.

2008-05-10 04:22:10.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases dtrace monitoring performance postgresql probes

Thursday May 08, 2008

[ Sun Microsystems Inc. ] Who Dons the Java DB T-Shirt

Giuseppe Maxia took this picture at JavaOne, 2008, just a couple of days ago. It shows Marten Mickos (MySQL) donning the Java DB T-Shirt and giving a friendly hug to PostgreSQL evangelist Josh Berkus. That's how the story of the three open-source databases from Sun will keep unfolding. Many observers have noted that customers and developers will have great choices to work with: the premier open-source DB for web applications, the premier open-source DB for demanding enterprise and reporting applications, and the premier open-source DB for embedding in Java applications. All from the same company. Sun!

2008-05-08 23:41:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases javadb javaone mysql postgresql sun

Wednesday May 07, 2008

[ Networks ] The Self-Ordering Chaos of Communities

In the chaos of their buzz and movement, bees build amazingly ordered nests for their young.  So do many communities of practice.

2008-05-07 23:30:42.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
bees chaos communities order programming software technology