Posted by synedra on Jun 19, 2009 in
Uncategorized When I started working on computers, the main thing people used databases for was storing tabular data. Sales reports, inventory records, lists of things. Relational databases were cool because you could associate a transaction in your sales table with an item in your inventory table. As the internet has grown, however, our database needs have outgrown the abilities of the standard relational database system. Social networks are a great example of this – the type of query needed to ask for six degrees of Kevin Bacon separation in a relational database is complex, resource intensive, and extremely time consuming. Many very smart people have come up with ways to work around this problem, but the real problem is that this type of question is not what relational databases are designed to handle.
Graph databases, on the other hand, are optimized for exactly this type of question. The problem with graph databases is that it’s a whole different data structure that we’ve got to wrap our minds around, and it’s difficult to do that without some starting place.
Freebase is a publicly accessible, open graph database, available for people to use as the back end for their applications. They’ve even created a
suite of tools to make it easier to build fun things on top of their extensive data. They will be giving a tutorial on
Semantic Technologies at OSCON, and if you have any interest in learning about graph structure and what you can do with it, you should definitely check it out.
If you want a more data-agnostic view of graph technologies, or want to try installing a graph database on your own, you can learn about
Neo4J, an open source graph database, on Wednesday afternoon.
Posted by synedra on Jun 10, 2009 in
Uncategorized Developing applications for mobile devices is often a daunting thought for those of us more comfortable in the land of high-level languages. However, in the wake of the new iPhone announcement, I thought I would check out the mobile development offerings at OSCON to see if there was anything I could sink my teeth into. It turns out that it’s become much easier to create content for the iPhone without having to turn to objective C.
The most intriguing tutorial I found was an introduction to the
PhoneGap project, a platform which makes it easy for developers to create applications which work on the iPhone as well as several other mobile platforms. A developer creates a web application using Javascript/HTML, and the framework provides a wrapper for this application which works as a native application on the mobile device. The tutorial covers development under
PhoneGap as well as the administrivia needed to get the resulting application into the App Store. I was curious about how well this kind of framework could work for general iPhone applications, so I browsed through their applications page and found a variety of applications including highly rated games and locationally-aware utilities. I’ll be excited to hear more about it at OSCON so I can get started playing with it.
I do have a macintosh, which has up until now been a requirement for most iPhone development – but for those of you who aren’t in the Cult of Jobs, another
tutorial gives you the information you need to develop for the iPhone using open source tools on Linux or Windows.
Of course, you still have to get a developer’s license from Apple before you can create an installable application for the iPhone. If you’re curious about iPhone development, these sessions should help you decide if you want to jump in and give it a try.