In my fourth Friday podcast we hear from Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software. I wrote about OpenLink's universal database and app server, Virtuoso, back in 2002 and 2003. Earlier this month Virtuoso became the first mature SQL/XML hybrid to make the transition to open source. The latest incarnation of the product also adds SPARQL (a semantic web query language) to its repertoire.
There are a number of perspectives from which to approach this podcast. If you're a student of open source databases, you'll want to understand the wealth of capability that Virtuoso brings to the table. If you've noticed Adam Bosworth's fingerprints all over Google's GData, you'll be challenged by Kingsley's vision of a continuum of web data access strategies ranging from rudimentary Atom and RSS protocols to remote SQL, XQuery, and SPARQL. If you're intrigued by Apple's Spotlight and Microsoft's forthcoming WinFS, you'll want to consider how an open standards, open source universal database could be the foundation of what Kingsley describes as "a web-enabled virtual Spotlight." And finally, if you're a Rails developer you'll want to be alerted to a couple of forthcoming Virtuoso enhancements: an ActiveRecord provider, and FastCGI support.
Update: Transcript now available.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/04/27.html#a1437