There’s been a bit a of brouhaha in the database blogosphere following a comparison that was made between the MapReduce framework and modern relational database management systems.
In this post on the Database Column blog, authors David J. DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker argued, among other things, that MapReduce was "a giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data instensive applications."
The debate continued with many thoughtful comments added to the original post.
On January 25th, David and Michael responded to many of the comments with another post.
As much as I love music, I simply can’t deal with morning radio.
There are only so many commercials for alarm systems, vacation getaways, and “once-in-a-lifetime” mattress sales that any man can take. As a result, I’ve turned to listening to audio books and podcasts to pass the time during the commute.
Since a number of people have asked for recommendations, here are some of my favourites:
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A paper I co-authored was accepted into the 33rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB 2007). The conference will be held at the University of Vienna, Austria
The paper is titled “Efficient Bulk Deletes for Multi Dimensionally Clustered Tables in DB2“.
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Loyal reader, Jeff, shared this article from the Kernel Trap.
It’s a historical summary of the release of Linux 0.01. The article contains the original release notes and early exchanges from the comp.os.minix newsgroup.
When one considers how successful Linux has become and the wide variety of platforms that Linux runs on, I thought theses quotes from Linus were particularly funny:
“Simply, I’d say that porting is impossible. It’s mostly in C, but most people wouldn’t call what I write C.”
“…just a hobby, won’t be big and professional…”
Odd, there is no mention of penguins 
A friend sent me this nugget of personal computing history.
It’s digitized recording of a Bill Gates speaking to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club in 1989.
If you curious about learning more about the history of the personal computing revolution, I recommend Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine.
Another DB2 Chat with the Lab session is coming up. Here’s the details:
DB2 9 pureXML in Action
Wednesday, March 28th
8 AM Pacific, 10 AM Cetral, 11 AM Eastern, 4 PM London, 5 PM Paris
Abstract
DB2 9 pureXML makes it easy to store, query, and manipulate XML. In this session we’ll describe how pureXML can be used in various industries such as financial services, healthcare, and insurance. Illustrations will be provided to show how pureXML can be part of a Forms, SOA, or Web 2.0 application. We’ll also describe how you can get started with pureXML.
Join Sal Vella, Vice President of DB2 Development, and Susan Malaika, Senior Technical Staff Member, to find out more about pureXML applications and demonstrations.
Click to RSVP for this session.
A few weeks back, I mentioned that the DB2 Runtime/Compiler area was hiring co-op students.
Now, I’m excited to announce that we’re also hiring full-time C/C++ Software Developers. The ideal candidates are innovative and energetic new graduates that want to develop world-class software at Canada’s largest software development facility, the IBM Toronto Lab.
You can read all the details on official job posting.
