On Wednesday Jan 16, 2008 Jonathan Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sun Microsystems, Inc., announced in his blog that SUN is acquiring MySQL AB.
On 26 February 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced it has completed the acquisition of MySQL AB, for approximately $1 billion in total consideration.
Kevin Harvey, Chairman of the MySQL board of directors told InfoQ that there were two main drivers behind Sun’s purchase of MySQL ” it solidifies Sun’s role in the Web 2.0 datacenter, and it also confirms Sun’s position as a leading provider of open source software.”
I have asked three of our experts, Robert Green, Leon Guzenda, and Rick Cattell a few questions on this. Robert is responsible for defining Versant’s overall object database strategy, Leon is responsible for the Objectivity object database strategy. Rick worked for several years at Sun Microsystems, and now he is an independent consultant.
Q1. What does this announcement mean for the database market in general? and specifically will it have any impact on the object database market in your opinion? and if yes, how?
RCG> I think this announcement means that companies who were concerned about putting MySQL into their enterprise environments will now rethink things. If Oracle was not concerned before about the MySQL threat, it ought to be now. It is interesting to watch as people are beginning to pay for these products, previously perceived as “free”, in the form of services and value added capabilities(in MySQL’s case, better tooling). I don’t think there will be any direct impact to the OODB market other than the perpetuation of changing attitudes that what counts most is using the right tool for the job. It’s that change in attitude that’s having the greatest impact on the OODB market.
LG> MySQL is a conventional RDBMS built and sold using the open source model. Sun has traditionally been vendor neutral in its approach to DBMS sales, partnering with whichever DBMS company a joint customer expressed interest in. They have always had a strong partnership with Oracle, for instance. As Oracle also sells its product on IBM hardware, competing
directly with DB2, these partnerships are interesting in their complexity. Will Oracle shift more of its attention to sales on HP
equipment rather than Sun’s. I doubt it. However, there will undoubtedly be some pressure on Sun’s sales people to work new deals that can be 100% handled and supported by Sun.
I can’t remember a situation where Objectivity/DB has been in competition with MySQL as we tackle completely different kinds of application, so this won’t affect us directly. Likewise, our customers almost all find us without Sun’s help, so I don’t think it matters that much to us.
RC> Sun has had a good adoption rate on its open source offerings: their application server, Open Office, Java, and so on. I believe that the MySQL acquisition was exactly the right move for Sun at this point, and also will be a big benefit to open source users.
The acquisition will be good for open source users because Sun will push MySQL innovation in new directions, Sun will provide long-term stability for MySQL, which has been under attack from Oracle (who recently acquired both InnoDB and SleepyCat, the “engines” for MySQL), and there will be synergy and benefits between MySQL and Sun’s current open source
offerings, e.g. the application server and development tools.
The acquisition was exactly the right move for Sun because unlike Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle, Sun did not have a strong database component in its software stack. Sun’s software stack is open source (again, the right move I believe). Unlike Sun’s current database offerings with PostgreSQL and Java DB, which are only strong in narrow markets,
MySQL has a very large following in a wide variety of applications. MySQL thereby gives Sun a complete software stack with “best of breed” solutions pretty much across the board. It also allows Sun to tune that software stack for its platform (for example, optimizing MySQL for Sun Solaris, and utilizing innovative proprietary hardware features).
As for the object database market, I don’t see the acquisition having a big impact one way or the other. Object database systems are being used in different markets than relational database systems, for the most part. However, Sun’s obvious support of open source is a “shot in the arm” for open source databases. Also, Sun’s Java Persistence API and
the adoption of object/relational mappings is a boost for object databases, because these allow object databases to be more easily and naturally substituted for relational databases in application servers and web servers. Sun will likely do some tuning of MySQL with JavaPersistence.
By the way, I recently left Sun to do independent consulting as Cattell.Net, so the opinions and speculations I express here are purely my own. But as I mentioned, I believe the MySQL acquisition was a great move, so I remain positive on Sun’s future if they play their cards right with the MySQL technology and customers over the next coupleyears.
Q2. Schwartz in his blog says “….customers confirmed what we’ve known for years – that MySQL is by far the most popular platform on which modern developers are creating network services. From Facebook, Google and Sina.com to banks and telecommunications companies, architects looking for performance, productivity and innovation have turned to MySQL.”
Will it change anything in this respect?
RCG> Well, I would hope the Schwartz believes in his message. The fact that Sun spent 1B for MySQL would suggest that he does not believe his perceptions will change for the worse, but I would hedge with a quote by Niels Bohr, “Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future”. The key is to provide value, so far MySQL has done this well, whether or not they have “peaked”, time will tell.
There are public declarations about where the technology succeeds and where it begins to break down, if they want to expand, there are known issues that must be addressed. The future is wrought with challenges due to unbounded data growth, coupled with concurrency and complexity. In the future, other drivers like “Green” abilities will outweigh the ability to simply get the job done. Almost anything can be forced to work, but when you have to decide between something that works on 1000 servers or 400, your decisions will be heavily influenced by these other factors.
I would predict, in the future, value will be driven by “Green” technologies, much like they have in the semi-conductor industry over the last decade.
LG> It might for ODBMSs that are targetting traditional IT applications.
Q3. Schwartz in his blog says: “The adoption of MySQL across the globe is nothing short of breathtaking. They are the root stock from which an enormous portion of the web economy springs”
Is this specific to MySQL or else?
RCG> I think the open source movement as a whole is the stock, MySQL is simply one of the branches, certainly big enough to hang a hammock without fear of breakage.
LG> Apart from the usual pressure to use the vendor’s technology, I can’t see Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server shops suddenly switching everything to MyQL because Sun now owns it. I think it more likely that MySQL users will be pressured to switch to Sun’s hardware offerings.
RC> I believe Schwartz is right: the adoption of MySQL has been incredible, particularly among the fast-growing web companies. This is another
reason that the MySQL acquisition was a smart move: it gives Sun an opening into these companies. Sun has suffered somewhat because these fast-growing companies have generally not bought Sun hardware,
support, or software. Sun has only done well with the traditional and more conservative “enterprise” companies. Now Sun has a complete open source software stack, gives customers a choice of operating systems, and offers competitive hardware with both Intel and SPARC architectures.
Sun is now well aligned with the fastest-growing sectors of the Internet market.
You might question how “adoption” translates into dollars for Sun, since open source is free. But I believe Sun is in a good position to monetize widespread adoption of its software stack, through support revenue, upgrade revenue, and synergy between software and hardware sales.
Q4. Schwartz in his blog says: ” So what are we announcing today? That in addition to acquiring MySQL, Sun will be unveiling new global support offerings into the MySQL marketplace. We’ll be investing in both the community, and the marketplace – to accelerate the industry’s phase change away from proprietary technology to the new world of open web platform”
What`s the meaning for the open source community in the database market?
RCG> Maybe this is supposed to be a trick question. I think the meaning is the same as it is to other software markets. The sum of the constituents that subscribe to it’s use and adoption. Software must increasingly provide value to
compete, even free and open software. If there is no appreciable value, then it will have no constituency. The key is to figure out where you are in that value curve and how best to drive adoption given your particular situation.
LG> Let’s not forget that Sun moved to the open source model as its own efforts started to lag the faster moving community. While this matters a lot in some highly dynamic and emerging markets it can even be a problem in enterprise applications. Red Hat was changing so rapidly at one point that equipment manufacturers and rigorous IT shops were having problems
achieving a stable base, so red Hat introduced the more pricey Enterprise Edition. Sun is probably aiming to make its money from services and bundled sales. Not all open source offerings have become commercially viable, but MySQL is a notable exception
Q5. Schwartz in his blog says: “The good news is Sun is already committed to the business model at the heart of MySQL’s success -”
Is MySQL business model usable/adaptable also for ODBMS? How?
RCG> As stated above, it’s identifiable value that is important. The MySQL business model for the sake of the MySQL business model is a non-starter. If you have a technology that has non-commoditized value, there are other equally viable business models. The ODBMS company I can think of that most closely matches the MySQL model is db4o, and they have a database value which is highly commoditized, so I guess that business model makes sense for them. Some of the other ODBMS companies have highly differentiated value, so they do not depend on a MySQL like business model. So, it appears that many business models work.
Which one works best is another question altogether. Ultimately, a business model has the goal of returning profits to it’s owners and shareholders in a competitive landscape. So, what is the best company/business model, one that has 50% of a 10B software market and only earns 60M/yr for shareholders ( at a loss ) or one that has .005% of the market and earns 25M/yr for their shareholders at a profit? Again, I think the important point is understanding where you are in the value curve to help establish the business model that makes the most sense. I think this is one of the places that Sun has fallen short in the past. They have been trying to do the MySQL business model, but have failed to really understand where their various offering reside in the value curve. I could be wrong or rather that could be changing – perhaps they understand it very well and it’s just more complex than a first glance. Perhaps software is the commodity and hardware is the value add and they are looking for MySQL to be the catalyst for adoption much like Hibernate was for JBoss.
LG> There are currently about a half dozen ODBMS products sold with conventional licensing and a similar number of open source ones. As in the early days of ODBMSs, where there were about three times more products than the market could sustain, I doubt that many of the open source ones will survive in a crowded, highly specialized market. RDBMSs
need a lot more support, e.g. for database administration, than ODBMSs, so the split between license sales and services is dramatically different for the two technologies. The open source ODBMSs will need to spread out into applications to earn significant revenue from services. At that point, if they’re in the wrong vertical they’ll be competing head on with the big players.
RC> An excellent question. Many companies have admired MySQL’s success and wondered how to emulate it. In my mind, MySQL is the only company in the last 20 years to successfully challenge the domination of Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft in the database market. Other database companies have failed, have been acquired, or have been relegated to a smaller niche
market.
Object database companies have generally been in the last category. Partly that was a matter of timing: object databases came out too early to “ride the wave” of the Internet, Java, and open source. Customers feared compromising the integrity of their databases using an “unsafe” C++ object database, and object databases met stiff competition from the
big relational players, both in marketing dollars and in inertia behind existing relational database installations.
I see that changing somewhat going forward. Although I think it’s too late for a new database contender to ride the “open source” wave in the way that MySQL did, and I still don’t see object databases challenging relational databases in mainstream markets, I do see that an open-source Java object database system could grow significantly, especially in
applications where relational databases are not well suited.
Q6. Specially to your company, do you see MySQL as an example you wish to follow?
RCG> Absolutely! The first company that comes along and offers 1B to acquire Versant, we will accept the deal on behalf of our shareholders 😉 Seriously, to remain viable, companies must constantly consider where they reside on the
value curve and adjust business models accordingly. Again, the future is especially hard to predict, should Versant decide it is prudent to switch business models, we would most certainly inform the public as is required by any publically traded corporation.
LG> No, not for pure ODBMSs. It will be interesting to track the commercial progress of db4objects, objectdb and other open source ODBMSs.
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I have been working together with Floyd Marinescu, editor of InfoQ.com, and produced a virtual panel asking a group of leading persistence solution architects their views on the current state of the union in persistence in the Java community.
The Panelists we interviewed are:
– Mike Keith : EJB co-spec lead, main architect of Oracle Toplink ORM
–Ted Neward: Independent consultant, often blogging on ORM and persistence topics
– Carl Rosenberger: lead architect of db4objects, open source embeddable object database
– Craig Russell: Formerly the spec lead of Java Data Objects (JDO) JSR, architect of entity bean engine in Sun’s appservers prior to Glassfish
The complete panel transcript is also available for free download (PDF). It is an interesting readings…
Roberto V. Zicari
I have received some information from Mrs. Charlotte W. Wales (The MITRE Corporation) related to the OMG Object Database Technology Users and Vendors Roundtable, which took place on 11 December 2007 at the OMG meeting in Burlingame, CA. I have listed it below as I have received it.
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News from OMG Object Database Technology Users and Vendors Roundtable, 11 December 2007
All the hard work that went into preparation of the Next Generation Object Database Standardization White Paper, augmented by the publicity received here at the ODBMS.ORG Portal (in the Forum), resulted in a successful Users and Vendors Users and Vendors Roundtable at the OMG meeting last December in Burlingame, CA. The meeting attendance of 14 was a healthy mixture of users and vendors representing Objectivity, Versant, Gemstone, db4Objects, and Fujitsu (used to market Jasmine) Tibco, Progeny, Boeing, TUMunich, Kangwon Univ (Korea), PJI, Syracuse Research, and MITRE.
After a welcome and introductions conducted by Char Wales (MITRE), Mike Card (Syracuse Research), calling in from his sickbed in New York, introduced the Next Generation Object Database Standardization effort, providing important historical and technical background including his role in the ODMG.
Prof K. Subieta (PJIT) then gave a presentation on his Stack Based Approach to Object Databases. Anat Ghafni (db4Objects) presented and summarized the high points of the sometimes lively discussions that appeared in the ODBMS Forum in response to the White Paper. These presentations laid an excellent groundwork for discussions during the ensuing Roundtable, moderated by Mike Card and Char Wales, which fulfilled the Roundtable’s “Objectives” – a completely open Forum, with nothing off limits.
The conclusion of the Roundtable was an agreement to work on a Roadmap for achieving the goal of an adopted Next Generation Object Database Standard with vendor implementations by 2009. Facilitated by teleconferences – the plan is to have an initial version of this Roadmap ready in time to present at the ICOODB 2008 ICOODB 2008 conference in Berlin and at the OMG Technical Committee meeting in Washington, DC, both scheduled for the same week in March 2008. If things proceed well, it is hoped that an RFP will be ready for issuance by June 2008, and – with luck – initial
submissions ready for review by the end of this year.
For the benefit of those who have not been part of this “from the beginning”, a recap of a few of the significant events within OMG leading to the Roundtable last December is in order:
-Sep 03: 1st Object Database Working Group meeting; idea of improving existing ODMG3.0 standard introduced.
-Nov 03, Apr ’04: “Socialization” of this idea within OMG.
-May 04: Morgan-Kauffman grants OMG the right “to publish, revise, disseminate and use original and revised versions of the Standard as an OMG specification (the “Specification”)” subject to limitations detailed in letter to OMG.
-Sep 05: ODBMS.ORG portal launched.
-Dec 06: Decision to expand scope to Object Database Technology (including modeling and mappings between object and relational).
-Feb 06: Object Database Technology Request for Information (RFI) Issued.
-Jun 06: Report summarizing 11 RFI responses identified three ways forward.
-Sep 07: Next-Generation Object Database Standardization White Paper issued.
Charlotte W. Wales
In memory of Brian Blaha
A tragedy occured to Michael Blaha`s family,
Michael is a database colleague and contributor to ODBMS.ORG.
I´d thought to share this with the community.
Roberto V. Zicari
Brian Blaha, the son of Michael Blaha, died on July 10, 2007 after a long and brave struggle with leukemia. He was halfway through his doctoral work in Computer Engineering when stricken with the disease. Brian was a brilliant student having received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering in 4 years while compiling a nearly 4.0 GPA.
We have established a scholarship fund in Computer Engineering in his honor. Those who are interested can directly contact the University of Missouri-Rolla, 212 Parker Hall, Rolla, MO 65409, USA. If there are any questions Connie Eggert (eggertc AT umr.edu) can answer them.
For tax purposes, contributions are charitable donations and the university will acknowledge them.
Grady Booch on Innovation
Happy New Year!
One of the main driving force which influenced the introduction of new generation database systems, such as ODBMS, was Object Oriented Programming (OOP). For OOP a number of OO methodologies have been introduced. I had the pleasure to interview Grady Booch.
Grady Booch is IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist, Rational Software, IBM.
Grady is recognized internationally for his innovative work on software architecture and software engineering. A renowned visionary, he has devoted his life’s work to improving the effectiveness of software developers worldwide. Booch is one of the original authors of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and has served as architect and architectural mentor for numerous complex software-intensive systems around the world in just about every domain imaginable.
Grady received his bachelor of science from the United States Air Force Academy in 1977 and his master of science in electrical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1979.
1. What is “Innovation” for you?
Innovation means creating something new, making a connection that has never been made before, discovering some underlying truth that has remained hidden. Innovation is all about thinking out of the box and destroying rigid assumptions. Innovation involves finding the simple beauty in that which is complex.
2. Who are your favorite innovators?
Edison and Feynman are at the top of my list.
3. What do you consider are the most promising innovations of the last 3 years?
In hardware, I’d say it’s the emergence of commercially viable multicore processors; in software, the growing standards for the semantic web; in society, the rise of social networking and blogging. for me personally, my exposure to NVC and the work of Marshall Rosenberg and Gail Taylor.
4. What does it help to become a successful innovator?
Three things: a manical, passionate focus, a lack of fear of failure, and a willingness to press on even when the structures and dynamics around you resist you.
5. Is there a price to pay to be an innovator? Which one?
A true innovator is often a stranger in a strange land. But then again, that’s a price only a non-innovator would care about.
6. What are the rewards to be an innovator?
The privilege of being able to create, to discover, to participate in that journey: these are the rewards that for me are sufficient unto themselves.
7. What are in your opinion the top 3 criteria for successful innovation?
I have no idea how to answer that question. There are as many paths to innovation as there are innovations themselves..
8. What would you recommend to young people who wish to pursue innovation?
The innovators I admire the most are whole people, not just sages in their own domain. So, my advice is to enjoy life, live fully – and the innovation will find you.
9. In your opinion how can we create a culture that supports and sustains innovation?
A culture that celebrates play is one that can support and sustain innovation.
10. What do you think stops/slows down innovation?
Rule-based organizations and people who view the world as in terms of absolute right and wrong are the worst inhibitors to innovation.
10+1 .Do you think becoming an innovator can be taught? If yes, how?
Yes, again by encouraging a sense of play in learning.
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Thank you for your questions…they are among the more interesting I’ve had thrown at me in a while 😉
GB.
What Standards for Object Databases?
I thought it would be interested to give you an insight of the discussion currently going on at ODBMS.ORG. The issue is what Standards for Object Databases?
Here are two notes, one from Wiliam Cook and one from Mike Card.
A copy of the OMG white paper on Next-Generation Object Database Standardization written by the OMG`s Object Database Technology Working Group, can be download here Next-Generation Object Database Standardization
Roberto V. Zicari
————–
Hi everybody.
I’m sorry that I was not able to attend the meeting on Dec 12. I hope that someone can post some information on it. I think it is great that these topics are being discussed, but I also have some significant disagrements with points being made here.
My biggest issue is that I don’t agree with the premise of the OMG RFI and Prof. Subieta’s response. The premise is that the problem is “the underlying lack of a set of precise definitions and semantics that has plagued ODMSs for years” [mpcard]. The assumption here is that people didn’t use object databases because OODBs didn’t have a solid theory like relational algebra. I do not believe that was the reason. I think the reason was that (1) most of the original OODBs systems didn’t support query optimization or transactions (2) they had difficulty externalizing their data in a way that could be evolved and used by other tools (3) when the did introduce query languages, they were subject to the same impedence mismatch as relational systems.
I think that Impedence mismatch is a language problem not a data problem. Relational data maps very well to traditional data structures in C, Pascal, or any other programming language: just create an array of records. Relational data maps fairly well to objects too, especially since you can represent relationships easily. The impedence mismatch comes from the need to partition a program into two parts: a query that is sent to the database, and a client program that uses the query results. Previously this partitioning was done by putting the query into a string, which causes all sorts of problems. Native Queries and LINQ are two more modern and effective ways to partition a program into a query and a client, so that the semantic connections between them are preserved. Prof. Subieta’s proposal does not address this problem, as far as I can tell.
As for data models, I think that Entity-Relationship models, UML class diagrams, and Subieta’s models are all essentially equivalent. They have the concept of records of attributes connected by relationships. The relational model also has ses of records, but the relationships are not explicit in the data model, but must be specified on each join operation. You can argue over fine points of inheritance and such things, but these are small points compared to the basic similarities of the models. It is not fair to compare any of these models to the network model, which as far as I can tell was a hack on top of the hierarchical data model. It is asuming that hierarchical data models have had a resurgence under the name XML; these are very useful for data transmission but are not a suitable foundation for a database.
As for query languages, I don’t think that the stack-based query language has anything fundament to offer over OQL. It is like saying that an HP calculator with postfix notation has a more solid theoretical model than a standard calcular that uses infix. I also want to point out that the core of OQL is not really object-oriented, becuase it does not deal with methods. It is just a great query language for ER data models. The key point is “entities and relationships” and that is what OQL was designed for and is good at. I do not agree that OQL is inconsistent. Suad pointed out some difficulties with the Java binding, and perhaps there are some other small problems with the way the standard was defined. But rather than fix these small issues, he claimed that the entire system is inconsistent.
See here for an alternative and more balanced view. I think that Prof. Subieta’s query syntax is perfectly reasonable as well. But it is not a fundamental advance, as far as I can tell.
NOTE: Native Queries are not propretary; they were described by one of my students and me in an ECOOP paper and then implemented by db4objects. They have been implemented by others as well, although not in any commercial systems. They are also similar to Microsoft’s LINQ in some ways.
So, to summarize. I think that OMQ is again trying to solve the wrong problem. I sent in a response to the RFI; and yes, it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. But I’m going to keep saying it.
The problem is not a lack of a grand unifying theory. There is plenty of theory to cover ER models, OQL, and other traditional ideas. The disucssions you are having don’t deal with impedence mismatch, which can happen even with an object-oriented language accessing an object-oriented database using OQL! If you put OQL into a string, then you are going to have impedence, and nothing about the formality of the data model or query language is going to fix it. The real problems are impedence mismatch, good query optimization, solid transaction support, evolution of data, and scalability to multiple servers. These are things that OODB vendors didn’t address until it was too late. They thought that objects alone would magically make everthing work well. But.. they don’t.
I’m sorry to be so negative about this, but I really think that there is an opportunity to improve the DB/PL interface.
Wiliam Cook
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Sciences
University of Texas at Austin
————–
Hello Prof. Cook-
You wrote:
“My biggest issue is that I don’t agree with the premise of the OMG RFI and Prof. Subieta’s response. The premise is that the problem is “the underlying lack of a set of precise definitions and semantics that has plagued ODMSs for years” [mpcard]. The assumption here is that people didn’t use object databases because OODBs didn’t have a solid theory like relational algebra. I do not believe that was the reason. I think the reason was that (1) most of the original OODBs systems didn’t support query optimization or transactions (2) they had difficulty externalizing their data in a way that could be evolved and used by other tools (3) when the did introduce query languages, they were subject to the same impedence mismatch as relational systems.”
I don’t think the RFI itself had a “premise,” at least that I am aware of. Regarding your 3 reasons why ODBMSs were not widely adopted, I would argue that you could trace all 3 of these issues to the lack of a good underlying object model and set of definitions and semantics. I cannot see how you think the “impedance mismatch” or DB/PL interface issue will be solved without laying a good theoretical foundation.
“The problem is not a lack of a grand unifying theory. There is plenty of theory to cover ER models, OQL, and other traditional ideas. The disucssions you are having don’t deal with impedence mismatch, which can happen even with an object-oriented language accessing an object-oriented database using OQL! If you put OQL into a string, then you are going to have impedence, and nothing about the formality of the data model or query language is going to fix it.”
Sure, but no one has ever tried to tie object definition/store models all the way up to a QL, defined with an abstract query processor, like Prof. Subieta has (at least as far as I have read). It is true that the formality of the data model won’t solve the “impedance mismatch” between a query string and a native PL,
but again this falls into the area of further work we have to do. Everyone thinks they have the best way to do this: everyone in ODMG thought their APIs were best and their way was best, and that a formal set of definitions, semantics, and object models was unnecessary because in the end developers just need to write code. That’s why ODMG chapter 2 was so weak and why there were so many “holes” in the ODMG specification: we were trying to write something that would cover several existing products without requiring anyone to make significant code changes. Users didn’t care about the standard because it did not guarantee application code (or even data) portability, so what did it matter? There was no conformance test suite, so you couldn’t even say for sure who was conformant to what.
“The real problems are impedence mismatch, good query optimization, solid transaction support, evolution of data, and scalability to multiple servers. These are things that OODB vendors didn’t address until it was too late. They thought that objects alone would magically make everthing work well. But.. they don’t.”
Yes these are real problems but I would argue that solving them will require a common theoretical foundation from which to build. I guess we’ll see if there is consensus on that view or not at next month’s ODBTWG telecon.
–Mike Card
Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC)
I received several very positive comments about the interview with Bjarne Stroustrup. People really like it.
I re-read the interview, and I wanted to ask Bjarne two more questions which are interesting to me addressing how Locations and People relate to Innovaton
Here is his reply…
2 More Questions to Bjarne Stroustrup
In your professional career you left Denmark and studied in UK and then immigrated to the USA to do research. What is in your opinion the influence that a “location” (country/region) plays with respect to the possibility to be a successful innovator?
I left Denmark to meet people doing more interesting work and having more interesting “toys” (i.e. advanced computers and software) than I could find at home. After a while, I found that it was not easy to return. The kind of work I was doing wasn’t done in Denmark and both industry and academia seemed closed to the kind of outsider I had become, working in Cambridge and at Bell Labs. I believe that Denmark (and Europe in general) is now far more open to ideas of practical research, but then there were few places for the kind of work I like to do.
For me as a young researcher, the quality of my colleagues dominated my choices. Denmark is one of the very best places in the world to live, but it did not have people like Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Roger Needham with an establish organization complete with great students. Cambridge is a town that – as a social environment – is second to none, even compared to my native Aarhus, so I didn’t feel serious social dislocation. However, the suburbs of Northern New Jersey are not a match for either, so I felt a loss. On the other hand, the Bell Labs Computer Science Research Center was – at the height of its powers – a uniquely stimulating environment. The people there, such as Doug McIlroy, Al Aho, Brian Kernighan, Bob Morris, Sandy Fraser, Dennis Ritchie, and many others, just made the Labs the greatest “playground” for a young computer scientist. Importantly, all the people I listed and the many more that I couldn’t mention without becoming tedious, are not just great technical people, but also real three-dimensional people with a wide variety of non-technical interests.
I’ll get back to “location” in the answer to your next question, but for me “people” trumped “location”.
What would you recommend to make a “location” attractive for innovation?
What you say “location”, I immediately think of places with a stunning physical presence, such as California (remember PARC, Stanford, CalTech, etc.), Provence (INRIA in Sophia Antipolis). Next I think of places, such as Cambridge (England) and Cambridge (Mass.) where great universities have created their own environment with little help from the surrounding countryside. A great university is essential – that’s where you find the talent and inspiration.
Families are crucial. No great place can stay great unless it can both attract young people and also sustain them as they build their families and bring up children. Recruiters talk about “the two-body problem” and usually miss the point that you don’t just have to attract talent; you have to make whole families grow in a community. Just about anyone worth employing can get another job elsewhere.
Every great place I have visited had – at least during the early years – a nucleus of really exceptional people. You need someone completely off the scale to get started. Later, merely good people can sustain an institution until the next great people come along. Organizations that foster innovation seem to have people who inspire and to leave ample time and space for younger talent to thrive and explore unexpected areas.
Building an environment for innovation isn’t done overnight – it takes decades. It follows that an organization that is stable over decades – such as a government or a university – must be involved. Commercial enterprises have – for good reasons – trouble looking that far ahead, but they thrive best in a location with at least one great university and a variety of other (competing and collaborating) commercial enterprises (hence the “research parks” that seem to spring up everywhere).
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For those of you interested in standards, here is an event you may want to consider attending, the:
Object Database Technology Users and Vendors Roundtable
on Tuesday, December 12, 2007 08:00-12:00 am, part of the
OMG Technical Meeting in Burlingame, CA
The Meeting is Sponsored by the OMG Middleware and Related Services Platform Task Force (MARS)
The Committee is composed of Michael Card Char Wales Anat Ghafni and Kazimierz Subieta.
I copy here the Objective of the meeting, as written by the above Commitee:
“Gather together vendors in and users of Object Database Technology in order to learn and share their opinions on the work performed so far by the OMG Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBTWG).
Working from the responses to the Request for Information (RFI) issued in February 2006, the WG has been investigating the research done by Prof. Kazimierz Subieta of the Polish Japanese Institute for Information Technology (PJIT) in Warsaw, Poland. Prof. Subieta’s team has developed an approach called “Stack-Based Architecture (SBA)” for defining the contents of an object database, the semantics of an abstract stack-based query processor, and its associated query language (SBQL). The WG considers this work to represent the object equivalent of the relational calculus in that it provides a precisely-defined, semantically complete set of definitions of what objects are, how they are stored, and how they can be queried.
Looking ahead, we would like to consider basing any future object database standard on the SBA object model so that the language bindings, query languages, etc. that follow are well-defined, self-consistent, and complete. Doing this would address many of the criticisms leveled at the earlier ODMG standards (e.g,, ODMG 3.0).
The objective of this meeting is not only to explain how we think the principles of the SBA could be incorporated into a future object database standard but also to listen to the opinions of object database vendors and users regarding this idea. To that end, nothing will be off limits. Let this be a forum for open discussions on what future object database standards should or should not look like, open-source collaborative projects such as reference implementations or conformance test suites, trends in the object database marketplace, level of user interest in object database technology, etc. ”
And here is the agenda:
-8:00 – 8:15 Call to Order: Introductions and Agenda Char Wales
-8:15 – 8:30 Introduction to the Next Generation Object Database Standardization Effort Mike Card
-8:30 – 9:45 Keynote: “Object database semantics: the stack-based architecture” Prof . Kazimierz Subieta
– Break 9:45 – 10:00
-10:00 – 10:30 ODBMS Forum: Summary of Initial Reactions to White Paper Anat Ghafni
-10:30 – 11:30 Roundtable: Users and Vendors reactions, comments, discussions Mike Card – Facilitator
11:30 – 12:00 Moving Forward – Plan of Action Char Wales – Facilitator
If you are interested to attend, you would need to register here
How the OMG technology process works
I was asked by a number of people how the OMG standardization process works.
I have found a link to a power point presentation which explains the essence of how the OMG technology process works
and it’s the official OMG word rather than just my interpretation of it.
Here’s the link to a Power Point presentation (as .pdf ) which does not require an OMG username/password to access: OMG Process
Char Wales explained me that the work they are doing in the Object DB technology WG fits into that structure.
The European Commission will call for new ICT project proposals from December 2007 to April 2008.
The European Commission will call for new ICT project proposals from December 2007 to April 2008.
FP7 ICT Call-3 is underway with a foreseen date of publication in early December 2007.
With an indicative call budget of 265 Mio Euro the 3rd ICT Call will address the following objectives:
-ICT-2007.2.2: Cognitive Systems, interaction, robotics.
-ICT-2007.4.3: Digital libraries and technology-enhanced learning.
-ICT-2007.4.4. Intelligent Content and Semantics.
-ICT-2007.8.4 Science of complex systems for socially intelligent ICT.
-ICT-2007.8.5 Embodied intelligence.
-ICT-2007.8.6 ICT forever yours.
-ICT-2007.9.2 International Cooperation.
-ICT-2007.9.3 Trans-national co-operation among NCPs.
More detailed information on ICT Call-3 will be available on CORDIS as soon as the call is published in December.
