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Posted to xindice-dev@xml.apache.org by Kevin O'Neill <ke...@apache.org> on 2003/12/03 22:03:14 UTC
Should Xindice be retired?
There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last three
months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by not
letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
Is it time to retire the project?
-k.
(Hard hat and flame suite on ;))
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Ryan Hoegg <rh...@isisnetworks.net>.
Hi Tom, I am very (pleasantly) surprised by this. I myself considered
the name xRPC for a new XML-RPC-like protocol that resolves some of
these issues. In addition, I wanted to decouple the message format from
the transport layer (HTTP 1.0 in XML-RPC). I registered xrpc.org in May!
In my research on this issue I have communicated with many people who
have done similar work to your specification. I am not sure this
conversation belongs on xindice-dev, but everyone who has looked at this
in the past has seemed to get to a certain point and then stop. If we
actually had a few applications using this new protocol, maybe it would
gain some steam. Of course, it would be up to the Xindice dev team to
decide if that is a direction they would like to take the project.
If you would like to take xrpc further, e-mail me off-list and I can
discuss my experiences further.
--
Ryan Hoegg
ISIS Networks
http://www.isisnetworks.net
Tom Bradford wrote:
> Dave Winer is of the opinion that to modify XML-RPC would be to break
> all implementations of it, which isn't necessarily the case. I'm
> also curious Vadim, what return types can't otherwise be coerced?
>
> I had an idea for a much slimmed down protocol called XRPC, I don't
> know if anyone would like to work on an implementation with me, but
> it's a much leaner, and attempts to support things like literal XML
> and a tighter binding with XML Schema datatypes. Also supports an
> asynchronous model.
>
> blog entry at
> http://tbradford.blogspot.com/2003_09_23_tbradford_archive.html
> spec and schema are at
> http://tbradford.blogspot.com/2003_09_26_tbradford_archive.html
>
> Ryan, XMLWriter needs to be modified to support proper UTF-8
> serialization... I took a shit-fit this weekend and created my own
> derivation of Apache XML-RPC's client to do all this stuff, you might
> want to take a look at it:
>
> http://tbradford.blogspot.com/
> 2003_11_30_tbradford_archive.html#107023953359946198
>
> --
> Tom Bradford - http://www.tbradford.org/
> CTO - The dbXML Group - http://www.dbxml.com/
> Project Labrador - http://www.dbxml.com/labrador/
>
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Vadim Gritsenko <va...@verizon.net>.
Tom Bradford wrote:
> Dave Winer is of the opinion that to modify XML-RPC would be to break
> all implementations of it, which isn't necessarily the case. I'm
> also curious Vadim, what return types can't otherwise be coerced?
Ok, bad wording on my part. Not change to the XML-RPC itself, but change
the data format Xindice uses to transmit results via XML-RPC driver.
Quoting Kevin O'Neill:
>To fix it we need to change the internal
>representation of the query results (and the wire format used by the
>xml-rpc driver).
>
This is WRT to bug 22156, and may be some other issues as well which are
(IIRC) exposed with unit tests.
Vadim
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Tom Bradford <br...@dbxmlgroup.com>.
Dave Winer is of the opinion that to modify XML-RPC would be to break
all implementations of it, which isn't necessarily the case. I'm also
curious Vadim, what return types can't otherwise be coerced?
I had an idea for a much slimmed down protocol called XRPC, I don't
know if anyone would like to work on an implementation with me, but
it's a much leaner, and attempts to support things like literal XML and
a tighter binding with XML Schema datatypes. Also supports an
asynchronous model.
blog entry at
http://tbradford.blogspot.com/2003_09_23_tbradford_archive.html
spec and schema are at
http://tbradford.blogspot.com/2003_09_26_tbradford_archive.html
Ryan, XMLWriter needs to be modified to support proper UTF-8
serialization... I took a shit-fit this weekend and created my own
derivation of Apache XML-RPC's client to do all this stuff, you might
want to take a look at it:
http://tbradford.blogspot.com/
2003_11_30_tbradford_archive.html#107023953359946198
--
Tom Bradford - http://www.tbradford.org/
CTO - The dbXML Group - http://www.dbxml.com/
Project Labrador - http://www.dbxml.com/labrador/
On Dec 3, 2003, at 4:54 PM, Ryan Hoegg wrote:
> Vadim Gritsenko wrote:
>
>> Not yet. I am out of free time right now (it's hard to find time for
>> two jobs, three projects, and family, so there is still some time
>> left to sleep), but I'm thinking I'll catch up on xindice in the
>> beginning of next year (february timeframe). Then, next beta release,
>> or 1.1 release, is in order (depending on issues left). Xindice also
>> will be shipped in the Cocoon, in embedded mode, and some samples
>> will be provided.
>>
>> BTW, how's your work on chaning XML-RPC protocol so it does support
>> all the necessary return datatypes?
>>
>> Vadim
>
>
> I for one have found success using Xindice 1.1. It has served me well
> as a hierarchical persistent store for one of my projects, and I am
> eyeing it for use in several others. I also happen to be a committer
> on Apache XML-RPC. So, I'll raise my hand and ask what I can do to
> help. Got an archive link for me? I have not been subscribed to
> xindice-dev for many months yet, so I may have missed it.
>
> Re: changing the XML-RPC protocol, I have been down this road once and
> Dave Winer is not at all open to changes to the protocol. Userland
> owns the trademark, and he has made it clear that he wants to prevent
> dilution of the name XML-RPC. I have encountered many ways to
> transmit complex data in XML-RPC messages while conforming to the
> spec, so show me the details! :)
>
> --
> Ryan Hoegg
> ISIS Networks
> http://www.isisnetworks.net
>
>
>
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Ryan Hoegg <rh...@isisnetworks.net>.
Vadim Gritsenko wrote:
> Not yet. I am out of free time right now (it's hard to find time for
> two jobs, three projects, and family, so there is still some time left
> to sleep), but I'm thinking I'll catch up on xindice in the beginning
> of next year (february timeframe). Then, next beta release, or 1.1
> release, is in order (depending on issues left). Xindice also will be
> shipped in the Cocoon, in embedded mode, and some samples will be
> provided.
>
> BTW, how's your work on chaning XML-RPC protocol so it does support
> all the necessary return datatypes?
>
> Vadim
I for one have found success using Xindice 1.1. It has served me well
as a hierarchical persistent store for one of my projects, and I am
eyeing it for use in several others. I also happen to be a committer on
Apache XML-RPC. So, I'll raise my hand and ask what I can do to help.
Got an archive link for me? I have not been subscribed to xindice-dev
for many months yet, so I may have missed it.
Re: changing the XML-RPC protocol, I have been down this road once and
Dave Winer is not at all open to changes to the protocol. Userland owns
the trademark, and he has made it clear that he wants to prevent
dilution of the name XML-RPC. I have encountered many ways to transmit
complex data in XML-RPC messages while conforming to the spec, so show
me the details! :)
--
Ryan Hoegg
ISIS Networks
http://www.isisnetworks.net
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Vadim Gritsenko <va...@verizon.net>.
Kevin O'Neill wrote:
>There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last three
>months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by not
>letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
>
>Is it time to retire the project?
>
>
Not yet. I am out of free time right now (it's hard to find time for two
jobs, three projects, and family, so there is still some time left to
sleep), but I'm thinking I'll catch up on xindice in the beginning of
next year (february timeframe). Then, next beta release, or 1.1 release,
is in order (depending on issues left). Xindice also will be shipped in
the Cocoon, in embedded mode, and some samples will be provided.
BTW, how's your work on chaning XML-RPC protocol so it does support all
the necessary return datatypes?
Vadim
Re: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Mario Cormier <mc...@miranda.com>.
That's exactly what I've been thinking myself. I think Xindice is a
project with a lot of potential, that could easily fit a nice little
niche, but unfortunately it's currently stalled completely. I
contributed a few patches and tried to help where I could, but seeing as
no one cared, and all potential users invariably give up one by one for
the same reasons, I gave up too. Considering the continued interest of
so many people, I personally think it's really a shame that the powers
that be are choosing to simply ignore the potential totally.
It's really sad, but I have to agree with you. If Apache XML doesn't
want to help build the community (or even let the community build
itself), then it should make that crystal clear and let the project be
transferred to people who care. I think interested people might be
reluctant to try and take on that role seeing that the Xindice project
is still alive. That would only confuse everyone further.
Mario
Kevin O'Neill wrote:
>There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last three
>months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by not
>letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
>
>Is it time to retire the project?
>
>-k.
>
>(Hard hat and flame suite on ;))
>
>
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Murray Altheim <m....@open.ac.uk>.
Tom Bradford wrote:
> Hi Murray,
>
> In speaking about priorities, you hit the nail on the head. Both
> Kimbro and I had priorities, paying the bills being the most important.
>
> The company had died, and as a last attempt to keep the project alive,
> we donated it to the ASF, after that, for many months, both of us
> continued to try to maintain the project, living on our savings, and
> trying to scrape money together however we could, simply because we
> wanted to see the project succeed. But when you're out of cash, and
> starting to realize you may go hungry soon, finding some income becomes
> a priority. Personally, I was offered a job with BEA, which is where I
> worked for about 6 or so months until it was proposed to me that dbXML
> could be brought back to life, but only if it were to be a commercial
> product. My love for the product forced me to quit BEA, and take a
> substantial pay cut to return to dbXML. In neither situation did I
> have the bandwidth to dedicate to Xindice.
Tom,
I'm glad you didn't respond with anger -- I didn't intend my message
to convey any. I completely understand that life is what happens when
your plans don't go as planned, and that you need to eat and have a
roof over your head prior to being able to doing cool and innovative
things. Very much so.
> And then there was the whole divorce thing.
Ouch. Having been there, and having a continuing ugly sore on my
psychic body from it (and having not seen my son in several years),
my sympathies.
> It has been my intention since returning to dbXML to ultimately either
> (a) donate major portions back to the ASF, or (b) open source the whole
> thing. The fact that the two projects have diverged substantially led
> me to the latter option.
>
> Personally, I care about both projects, and it would be nice to see
> Xindice succeed. Obviously there is an ego thing involved if it does
> succeed, but I'm just as bandwidth constrained now as I have been for
> the past year, and my focus has to be on the company's product, rather
> than other major projects.
Understood. I wonder how much actual time it would take to get 1.1
to a release point, from the core database standpoint. There are
probably enough interested people who could do the documentation,
the fleshing out of subsidiary parts, that maybe some commitment
from you over the next few months might keep the project alive. I
don't know if anyone else could step in, honestly. I think we've
seen some proof of that. I'm a strong believer that projects happen
because talented people make them happen, usually a core of people
committed to success. Absent that core few projects survive. I too
would like to see Xindice succeed. It would be sad to answer the
subject line of this thread in the negative, especially after so
much energy has gone into it.
Alternately, what's the chance of you open sourcing dbXML under
LGPL? Then I and others could use it. That would tend to drain
energy away from Xindice, but I'm not committed to the Xindice
or ASF "brand names" but the code. And you wrote both, which is
as much an endorsement as I can think of.
Murray
......................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
[...] all matters of authority and responsibility are ultimately
matters of social practice, and never matters of ontology (that
is, never just a matter of how things in fact are in the nonhuman
world). [...] just as we should not look to ground our moral
judgments in the nonhuman authority of a god, so we should not
look to ground our empirical judgments in the nonhuman authority
of an external world. -- Robert Brandom
http://www.tilgher.it/brandom.html
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Tom Bradford <br...@dbxmlgroup.com>.
Hi Murray,
In speaking about priorities, you hit the nail on the head. Both
Kimbro and I had priorities, paying the bills being the most important.
The company had died, and as a last attempt to keep the project alive,
we donated it to the ASF, after that, for many months, both of us
continued to try to maintain the project, living on our savings, and
trying to scrape money together however we could, simply because we
wanted to see the project succeed. But when you're out of cash, and
starting to realize you may go hungry soon, finding some income becomes
a priority. Personally, I was offered a job with BEA, which is where I
worked for about 6 or so months until it was proposed to me that dbXML
could be brought back to life, but only if it were to be a commercial
product. My love for the product forced me to quit BEA, and take a
substantial pay cut to return to dbXML. In neither situation did I
have the bandwidth to dedicate to Xindice.
And then there was the whole divorce thing.
It has been my intention since returning to dbXML to ultimately either
(a) donate major portions back to the ASF, or (b) open source the whole
thing. The fact that the two projects have diverged substantially led
me to the latter option.
Personally, I care about both projects, and it would be nice to see
Xindice succeed. Obviously there is an ego thing involved if it does
succeed, but I'm just as bandwidth constrained now as I have been for
the past year, and my focus has to be on the company's product, rather
than other major projects.
--
Tom Bradford - http://www.tbradford.org/
CTO - The dbXML Group - http://www.dbxml.com/
Project Labrador - http://www.dbxml.com/labrador/
On Dec 3, 2003, at 4:03 PM, Murray Altheim wrote:
> Tom Bradford wrote:
>> dbXML, which served as the original codebase for Xindice 1.0, has
>> recently been re-released as a GPLed project. For over a year, dbXML
>> was developed as a proprietary product and licensed commercially. In
>> the process, it has benefited from real world customer feedback, and
>> has become rather robust. It is very different from Xindice, and in
>> a sense was nearly completely rewritten from scratch after version
>> 1.0.
>> It may be worth checking out if you can stomach the GPL.
>> Now onto my personal opinion about Xindice being stalled and retired.
>> The reason that I decided to open source dbXML again was mainly
>> because Xindice was stalled, and I didn't see that situation changing
>> significantly in any reasonable amount of time.
>> The biggest problem I see with it is that nobody has stepped up to
>> jump into the guts of the system and try to stabilize or build out
>> the database core. Unless that's done, the project is very well
>> doomed. Unfortunately, hard core database skills are very hard to
>> come by, and so it may be quite impossible to find even one person
>> willing to put the effort into maintaining the database core.
>
> Tom,
>
> As someone who was beginning to use dbXML just as it switched
> over to Xindice, I've been both a beneficiary and a victim of
> its situation. Given that you and Kimbro were the people with
> "hard core database skills" who absented themselves from the
> Xindice project, you two as much as anyone were the ones who
> doomed Xindice to oblivion. I don't know why dbXML ended up
> getting your attention, and perhaps that's none of my business,
> but the damage is done. There was nobody available to step
> into your shoes, and the project has languished. You apparently
> are either unable or unwilling to step into those shoes at this
> time -- I was surprised to see your message stating the status
> of Xindice so flatly, since it was your lack of involvement as
> much as anyone's that is the cause.
>
> I don't state this with any blame or anger (maybe some frustra-
> tion), really, just as a matter of record.
>
> In the past week I finally started to fix the problems I have
> been having with my own project's use of Xindice 1.0 (not
> daring to upgrade to 1.1) by trying out eXist. I would have
> liked to use Ozone, but I don't think I have the time and
> the latitude to experiment in whether it would work okay or
> not, and the new version's support for XML:DB is still nascent.
>
> So, I tried out eXist; I spent about a day swapping over so that
> my project includes both Xindice and eXist 0.9.2, the latest
> version. It wasn't too difficult given XML:DB, but eXist had a
> few bugs. eXist relies to a small degree on Xindice's class
> CollectionManager, which in Xindice 1.1 is now an interface.
> The eXist implementation doesn't follow Xindice's API exactly,
> nor does the DOM implementation follow the DOM exactly either.
> So I had to make some minor modifications just to make it
> conform. But other troubles loomed.
>
> If you look at the code of org.exist.dom.ElementImpl you'll
> see that the namespace URI is being totally ignored, and the
> method returns null rather than an empty string. And the XML
> namespace attributes are being completely lost.
>
> So I've sent a message off to the eXist project head, including
> the bug fixes I'd done. After two days, no reply. He may be
> on holiday. But it's a very unsatisfying start to my eXist
> experience. These kinds of things are reminiscent of the early
> days of dbXML and Xindice. I've now shelved my eXist efforts
> until I get some feeling on any real activity happening within
> that project, whether there's any bug fixing going on, or if
> the project is going to do another Xindice number on me.
>
> As for my XNode API, I tried farming it out at Apache's
> Incubator, joining their mailing list upon Brian Behlendorf's
> advice, but quit in frustration. Waaaay too complicated and
> involved a process to simply publish an API. I would have had
> to commit major amounts of time just to do so.
>
> So in the end, there's no magic bullet except people with
> demonstrable skills pouring them into projects. Given that
> my priority is my Ph.D. project and that I don't have any
> particular database chops, there's little I can do here.
> But I must admit my frustration, exasperation, and curiosity
> in the fate of Xindice. If such a project can't survive at
> Apache, I don't think it will survive anywhere else. I'm
> sad to see it go, as had 1.1 been viable and on time I'd be
> using it. I can't stomach a GPL project (LGPL would have been
> okay) but I'm also not willing to switch to dbXML given that
> the effort in my opinion could have been spent on Xindice
> instead. They're both your babies, one was just left on a
> doorstep. The big question remains, that of all people who
> could have stepped up, why not you? And if you weren't willing,
> why didn't you tell us all about a year ago?
>
> Murray
>
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
>
> [...] all matters of authority and responsibility are ultimately
> matters of social practice, and never matters of ontology (that
> is, never just a matter of how things in fact are in the nonhuman
> world). [...] just as we should not look to ground our moral
> judgments in the nonhuman authority of a god, so we should not
> look to ground our empirical judgments in the nonhuman authority
> of an external world. -- Robert Brandom
> http://www.tilgher.it/brandom.html
>
>
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Murray Altheim <m....@open.ac.uk>.
Tom Bradford wrote:
> dbXML, which served as the original codebase for Xindice 1.0, has
> recently been re-released as a GPLed project. For over a year, dbXML
> was developed as a proprietary product and licensed commercially. In
> the process, it has benefited from real world customer feedback, and
> has become rather robust. It is very different from Xindice, and in a
> sense was nearly completely rewritten from scratch after version 1.0.
>
> It may be worth checking out if you can stomach the GPL.
>
> Now onto my personal opinion about Xindice being stalled and retired.
> The reason that I decided to open source dbXML again was mainly because
> Xindice was stalled, and I didn't see that situation changing
> significantly in any reasonable amount of time.
>
> The biggest problem I see with it is that nobody has stepped up to jump
> into the guts of the system and try to stabilize or build out the
> database core. Unless that's done, the project is very well doomed.
> Unfortunately, hard core database skills are very hard to come by, and
> so it may be quite impossible to find even one person willing to put
> the effort into maintaining the database core.
Tom,
As someone who was beginning to use dbXML just as it switched
over to Xindice, I've been both a beneficiary and a victim of
its situation. Given that you and Kimbro were the people with
"hard core database skills" who absented themselves from the
Xindice project, you two as much as anyone were the ones who
doomed Xindice to oblivion. I don't know why dbXML ended up
getting your attention, and perhaps that's none of my business,
but the damage is done. There was nobody available to step
into your shoes, and the project has languished. You apparently
are either unable or unwilling to step into those shoes at this
time -- I was surprised to see your message stating the status
of Xindice so flatly, since it was your lack of involvement as
much as anyone's that is the cause.
I don't state this with any blame or anger (maybe some frustra-
tion), really, just as a matter of record.
In the past week I finally started to fix the problems I have
been having with my own project's use of Xindice 1.0 (not
daring to upgrade to 1.1) by trying out eXist. I would have
liked to use Ozone, but I don't think I have the time and
the latitude to experiment in whether it would work okay or
not, and the new version's support for XML:DB is still nascent.
So, I tried out eXist; I spent about a day swapping over so that
my project includes both Xindice and eXist 0.9.2, the latest
version. It wasn't too difficult given XML:DB, but eXist had a
few bugs. eXist relies to a small degree on Xindice's class
CollectionManager, which in Xindice 1.1 is now an interface.
The eXist implementation doesn't follow Xindice's API exactly,
nor does the DOM implementation follow the DOM exactly either.
So I had to make some minor modifications just to make it
conform. But other troubles loomed.
If you look at the code of org.exist.dom.ElementImpl you'll
see that the namespace URI is being totally ignored, and the
method returns null rather than an empty string. And the XML
namespace attributes are being completely lost.
So I've sent a message off to the eXist project head, including
the bug fixes I'd done. After two days, no reply. He may be
on holiday. But it's a very unsatisfying start to my eXist
experience. These kinds of things are reminiscent of the early
days of dbXML and Xindice. I've now shelved my eXist efforts
until I get some feeling on any real activity happening within
that project, whether there's any bug fixing going on, or if
the project is going to do another Xindice number on me.
As for my XNode API, I tried farming it out at Apache's
Incubator, joining their mailing list upon Brian Behlendorf's
advice, but quit in frustration. Waaaay too complicated and
involved a process to simply publish an API. I would have had
to commit major amounts of time just to do so.
So in the end, there's no magic bullet except people with
demonstrable skills pouring them into projects. Given that
my priority is my Ph.D. project and that I don't have any
particular database chops, there's little I can do here.
But I must admit my frustration, exasperation, and curiosity
in the fate of Xindice. If such a project can't survive at
Apache, I don't think it will survive anywhere else. I'm
sad to see it go, as had 1.1 been viable and on time I'd be
using it. I can't stomach a GPL project (LGPL would have been
okay) but I'm also not willing to switch to dbXML given that
the effort in my opinion could have been spent on Xindice
instead. They're both your babies, one was just left on a
doorstep. The big question remains, that of all people who
could have stepped up, why not you? And if you weren't willing,
why didn't you tell us all about a year ago?
Murray
......................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
[...] all matters of authority and responsibility are ultimately
matters of social practice, and never matters of ontology (that
is, never just a matter of how things in fact are in the nonhuman
world). [...] just as we should not look to ground our moral
judgments in the nonhuman authority of a god, so we should not
look to ground our empirical judgments in the nonhuman authority
of an external world. -- Robert Brandom
http://www.tilgher.it/brandom.html
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Tom Bradford <br...@dbxmlgroup.com>.
dbXML, which served as the original codebase for Xindice 1.0, has
recently been re-released as a GPLed project. For over a year, dbXML
was developed as a proprietary product and licensed commercially. In
the process, it has benefited from real world customer feedback, and
has become rather robust. It is very different from Xindice, and in a
sense was nearly completely rewritten from scratch after version 1.0.
It may be worth checking out if you can stomach the GPL.
Now onto my personal opinion about Xindice being stalled and retired.
The reason that I decided to open source dbXML again was mainly because
Xindice was stalled, and I didn't see that situation changing
significantly in any reasonable amount of time.
The biggest problem I see with it is that nobody has stepped up to jump
into the guts of the system and try to stabilize or build out the
database core. Unless that's done, the project is very well doomed.
Unfortunately, hard core database skills are very hard to come by, and
so it may be quite impossible to find even one person willing to put
the effort into maintaining the database core.
--
Tom Bradford - http://www.tbradford.org/
CTO - The dbXML Group - http://www.dbxml.com/
Project Labrador - http://www.dbxml.com/labrador/
On Dec 3, 2003, at 2:27 PM, Antoine Lévy-Lambert wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> on the "open source market" for xml databases there are Xindice and
> exist.
> I think that XML databases are a nice thing and that it is good that
> the ASF
> has its own.
> Do you think that exist is better than Xindice, or are you just
> worried that
> you do not have enough committers on the project ?
> I am not saying I want to become one, but maybe if you are patient
> there
> could be some joining your group.
> I need to test xindice for a project I am doing for my company.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Kevin O'Neill
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 22:03
> An: xindice-dev@xml.apache.org
> Betreff: Should Xindice be retired?
>
>
> There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last
> three
> months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by
> not
> letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
>
> Is it time to retire the project?
>
> -k.
>
> (Hard hat and flame suite on ;))
>
>
>
>
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org>.
> I keep thinking xindice is almost there (one hole at a time ;)). If we could
> find our consensus, know what we have already, organize our efforts and
> leverage the best of breed, then the last mile might be a lot more fun.
If you want to - set yourself a deadline (or as the PMC/board to do that)
e.g. significant commits by multiplepeople and a release by Februari
2004.. and if not then ask for (or have) the project retired.
Dw.
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Don Saxton <ds...@pacbell.net>.
The last status.xml I saw was a year ago from Vladimir Bossicard. It was a
little diffacult to connect the to-do items to code and there were no items
reflecting what has been done. Nonetheless a valiant effort.
I think a good to-do / is-done list is needed. Similarly the items needs to
be connected to some interfaces. That done we can pass the doc to the other
xml db projects and start some sort of (any! sort of) consensus about 1)
what are the necessary services, 2) the common services, and finally 3) how
to commonly categorize the wildly divergent services.
That done (or in progress) we can figure out 1) how to swap components
supporting those interfaces, 2) which components are better, 3) which
components to take, and 4) what few remaining things do we really need to
do.
I keep thinking xindice is almost there (one hole at a time ;)). If we could
find our consensus, know what we have already, organize our efforts and
leverage the best of breed, then the last mile might be a lot more fun.
Maybe a race to the finish between projects. Also with all the projects
working together on common problems (wasn't that an idea of opensource?),
maybe a light will go on at xmldb initiative.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kimbro Staken" <ks...@xmldatabases.org>
To: <xi...@xml.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
There are actually four open source native XML databases of any
maturity, Xindice, eXist, dbXML and Berkeley DB XML. Of those it pains
me to say it, but in most ways Xindice is now the worst. However all
four are released under different licenses and have different design
constraints (although Xindice and dbXML are close). Since Xindice is
the only non-viral licensed system It would definitely be a big loss if
Xindice were to disappear.
In my opinion, Xindice suffers from a number of problems. Probably the
most significant is that the code, especially in the core database, is
overly complex and suffers from a number of pre-mature optimizations
that I really wish weren't there (in particular the compressed DOM).
This complexity has prevented evolution of the core functionality as
the core is simply too hard to change for developers unfamiliar with
the code.
I attribute this problem to the fact that Xindice was originally
intended as a commercial product and was engineered to eventually be a
viable product in that space. Unfortunately, the commercial support is
no longer there, the original developers (Tom and myself) haven't been
able to contribute and that complexity is now a major barrier to new
developers being able to modify the code.
I've struggled for a long time with what to do about this. With 1.1 I
started trying to simplify things like throwing out CORBA and the
custom application server that we used, but I never really figured out
what to do with the database core. I explored various things from
writing unit tests to experimenting with a complete rewrite starting
from the bottom up, but I just couldn't commit the time required to
make any real progress and eventually got pulled away completely.
Today I still struggle with it, and I still have no answers for the
problem.
All I know is that Xindice needs new developers and those developers
need to do whatever is necessary to make the system their own. There
have been a lot of lessons learned about what an XML database needs to
do. Maybe Xindice 1.0 needs to be called a prototype and an effort
needs to be started to just start over. The project framework is here,
there are a lot of talented developers who contribute to Apache
projects and there is much to learn from the current system.
On Dec 3, 2003, at 2:27 PM, Antoine Lévy-Lambert wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> on the "open source market" for xml databases there are Xindice and
> exist.
> I think that XML databases are a nice thing and that it is good that
> the ASF
> has its own.
> Do you think that exist is better than Xindice, or are you just
> worried that
> you do not have enough committers on the project ?
> I am not saying I want to become one, but maybe if you are patient
> there
> could be some joining your group.
> I need to test xindice for a project I am doing for my company.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Kevin O'Neill
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 22:03
> An: xindice-dev@xml.apache.org
> Betreff: Should Xindice be retired?
>
>
> There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last
> three
> months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by
> not
> letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
>
> Is it time to retire the project?
>
> -k.
>
> (Hard hat and flame suite on ;))
>
>
>
>
Kimbro Staken
Software, Consulting and Writing http://www.xmldatabases.org/
Apache Xindice native XML database http://xml.apache.org/xindice
XML:DB Initiative http://www.xmldb.org
Re: AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Kimbro Staken <ks...@xmldatabases.org>.
There are actually four open source native XML databases of any
maturity, Xindice, eXist, dbXML and Berkeley DB XML. Of those it pains
me to say it, but in most ways Xindice is now the worst. However all
four are released under different licenses and have different design
constraints (although Xindice and dbXML are close). Since Xindice is
the only non-viral licensed system It would definitely be a big loss if
Xindice were to disappear.
In my opinion, Xindice suffers from a number of problems. Probably the
most significant is that the code, especially in the core database, is
overly complex and suffers from a number of pre-mature optimizations
that I really wish weren't there (in particular the compressed DOM).
This complexity has prevented evolution of the core functionality as
the core is simply too hard to change for developers unfamiliar with
the code.
I attribute this problem to the fact that Xindice was originally
intended as a commercial product and was engineered to eventually be a
viable product in that space. Unfortunately, the commercial support is
no longer there, the original developers (Tom and myself) haven't been
able to contribute and that complexity is now a major barrier to new
developers being able to modify the code.
I've struggled for a long time with what to do about this. With 1.1 I
started trying to simplify things like throwing out CORBA and the
custom application server that we used, but I never really figured out
what to do with the database core. I explored various things from
writing unit tests to experimenting with a complete rewrite starting
from the bottom up, but I just couldn't commit the time required to
make any real progress and eventually got pulled away completely.
Today I still struggle with it, and I still have no answers for the
problem.
All I know is that Xindice needs new developers and those developers
need to do whatever is necessary to make the system their own. There
have been a lot of lessons learned about what an XML database needs to
do. Maybe Xindice 1.0 needs to be called a prototype and an effort
needs to be started to just start over. The project framework is here,
there are a lot of talented developers who contribute to Apache
projects and there is much to learn from the current system.
On Dec 3, 2003, at 2:27 PM, Antoine Lévy-Lambert wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
> on the "open source market" for xml databases there are Xindice and
> exist.
> I think that XML databases are a nice thing and that it is good that
> the ASF
> has its own.
> Do you think that exist is better than Xindice, or are you just
> worried that
> you do not have enough committers on the project ?
> I am not saying I want to become one, but maybe if you are patient
> there
> could be some joining your group.
> I need to test xindice for a project I am doing for my company.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Kevin O'Neill
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 22:03
> An: xindice-dev@xml.apache.org
> Betreff: Should Xindice be retired?
>
>
> There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last
> three
> months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by
> not
> letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
>
> Is it time to retire the project?
>
> -k.
>
> (Hard hat and flame suite on ;))
>
>
>
>
Kimbro Staken
Software, Consulting and Writing http://www.xmldatabases.org/
Apache Xindice native XML database http://xml.apache.org/xindice
XML:DB Initiative http://www.xmldb.org
AW: Should Xindice be retired?
Posted by Antoine Lévy-Lambert <an...@antbuild.com>.
Hi Kevin,
on the "open source market" for xml databases there are Xindice and exist.
I think that XML databases are a nice thing and that it is good that the ASF
has its own.
Do you think that exist is better than Xindice, or are you just worried that
you do not have enough committers on the project ?
I am not saying I want to become one, but maybe if you are patient there
could be some joining your group.
I need to test xindice for a project I am doing for my company.
Cheers,
Antoine
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: news [mailto:news@sea.gmane.org]Im Auftrag von Kevin O'Neill
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2003 22:03
An: xindice-dev@xml.apache.org
Betreff: Should Xindice be retired?
There has been very little development done on Xindice over the last three
months and it may be the case that we are doing users a disservice by not
letting users know that the project is effectively inactive.
Is it time to retire the project?
-k.
(Hard hat and flame suite on ;))