developerWorks : XML : XML Structures for Existing Databases

This book chapter, excerpted from the just-published Wrox Press book Professional XML Databases, offers clear, authoritative guidance for how to deal with an existing database that you need to move to XML, from modeling the tables and keys to dealing with orphaned elements. The chapter provides an overview of the issues involved and details 11 rules for creating XML data structures for data in a relational database. The article includes suggestions for creating data structures that can be processed rapidly. Used with the permission of the publisher.

Digital Journey - The Future of Microprocessor Development according to Sun. The webcasts include:

Customer Viewpoints

Anant Agrawal and John Shoemaker discuss experiences with customers. They discuss real experiences with customers and the challenges they face in their businesses. Customers of today differ from the customer of five to ten years ago. Performance issues have changed and requirements for processors have changed.

Design Engineers

Anant Agrawal discusses with Director of Engineering, Le Quach, and design engineer Dale Greenley how Sun's UltraSPARC team focuses on and prioritizes design objectives. Discussion on challenges of designing the highly complex, massively scalable UltraSPARC III processor and some of the key features.

Technical Perspectives

Bill Joy talks with John Gage about system architectures and various elements of CISC, RISC, VLIW and the SPARC architecture vs. Intel's IA-64 architecture. They also discuss advances in microprocessor design and how Sun develops and designs microprocessors.
 
Joy and Gage continue with an historical overview (~1970 to present) of Sparc architectures, the early days of chip design and the evolution of design architectures: CISC, RISC, VLIW. Finally they cover reliability issues as it relates to current and future processor development.

Integrated Systems

Greg Papadopoulos and John Gage discuss how Sun builds large-scale systems that integrate technology from the entire company - starting all the way down at the chip level. Greg addresses building integrated stacks for specific applications and Sun's expertise in scalability, uptime optimization and reliability. (Part 1)
 
Greg Papadopoulos and John Gage continue to discuss how Sun builds large-scale systems that integrate technology from the entire company - starting all the way down at the chip level. (Part 2)

Enterprise - Tech News - CNET.com

Sun executives are expected to tout Sun's Web services infrastructure as able to connect anything "with an IP address or that is IP-addressable," whether it's from Sun or not, sources said. Sun also is expected to emphasize its role in connecting not only services but different kinds of networks (such as global positioning systems, cell phone networks, and the like) via the Sun ONE architecture.

I guess we'll find out later today what Sun's ONE is all about. Should be interesting.

Zopefish is back and Once again, into the breach. Good news!

Dave asks the question What is .NET? One of the replies to which includes this opinion from Buck Flannigan:

.NET (as well as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc etc.) will boil down to XML over the ubiquitous HTTP[S] infrastructure already in place. this is why these efforts will success where past distributed computing efforts (semi)failed - the underlying infrastructure to support .NET is PERVASIVE. existing web-servers can be repurposed as a "programmable web" for distributed computing.

Talking about pervasive computing reminds me that there's a new research group coalescing in my Department whose goal is to harness the potential of pervasive computers. I attended a departmental seminar last week by Prof Paddy Nixon who heads the research group.

In the spirit if Ars Technica and ArsDigita, the Conversant site I'm about to set up for my Computer Architecture and Design group assignment is Ars Pentia.

Today marked the first anniversary of http://friday.editthispage.com - my Transmeta Crusoe website.

Andrea wonders:

Maybe it will get reactivated some day?!

Perhaps, Andrea, perhaps. I'd like to make sure that the content provided by my students is preserved at least so I guess I should investigate transferring it into my uni website. I'm keeping an eye on the integration of Radio Userland and Manila to see if that's the sensible way to 'copy' it over.

PS The next CAD assignment for my students involves the Pentium 4!

Must remember to make a note of the Logictran RTF Converter: Word/RTF to HTML/XML. Oh! I just did!! ;-)

By the time I get up tomorrow morning my Transmeta Crusoe Manila-hosted website will be one year old. Friday was a class assignment website and my students did a great job of fleshing it out. Seems a shame that it has basically lain fallow since they finished their assignments.