Archive for the ‘Announcement’ Category

OSCON 2010 – The State of the Engine

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Again, OSCON 2010 was a great and fun show. We were lucky to be invited to present our project at Community booth 122. During the two days of the expo, we had the opportunity to explore a lot of possible use cases, and gained valuable insight into what people are using BlackRay for and where future uses are most probable.

At this point, we are making good progress on the 0.11 release. Mike has completed a full refactoring of the Index Functions (Issue 75) and is currently under way to redo the SQL using Lemon and Quex (Issue 77). This is very exciting and makes it a lot easier to actually use BlackRay for common database tasks that require more SQL compliance than the 0.10 release could offer.

Additionally we have identified two major features that must either make it into 0.11 or 0.12, either one of which would also make a GA release candidate once we support this.

Online Updates

BlackRay would be able to replace traditional disk-based databases in many cases when a true online update is implemented. This feature is complex and will take time, but it needs to be evaluated soon.

SQL Aggregate Functions

In order to make BlackRay a suitable choice for analytical workloads, we need Aggregate functions as well as the GROUP BY clause in our SQL. This feature is significantly less complex to implement, and would make BlackRay a prime choice in many data warehouse and statistical setups.

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BlackRay at the MySQL Conference

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Last Minute Changes! BlackRay will be present at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference April 12-14 in Santa Clara, CA with both a presentation and a booth!

At booth 112, there will be a chance to chat with some developers and maybe, if you mention you saw it on the Blog, a chance to snatch a BlackRay T-Shirt.

Also, Felix will be doing a talk on using BlackRay as a storage engine – or at least why it is not trivial to do so.

We’d be happy to see you guys in Santa Clara and maybe go for a beer after the show! Feel free to contact us if you want to schedule a talk with us or if you have any comments!

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February Updates – SQL Engine, ODBA and MySQL Conference …

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

It has been quiet on the blog lately, but things behind the scenes have made quite som progress. After the long hours preceding our Mid-December Release of the 0.10 version most members of the team used the quiet time over Christmas to get some rest. And, of course, to think of new and exciting stuff for the upcoming 0.11 release. While no date has been set for the release, we anticipate something around MySQL Con Mid April.

SQL Engine Rewrite

Mike has investigated some new tools to rewrite the SQL Engine. The issue has been extensively discussed on the mailing list and is being tracked on the Forge as Task #78. We welcome all feedback anyone may have on Lemon, Quex or related technologies.

Related to this effort, also the function backend is being refactored. The refactoring will allow the BlackRay internal functions to be exposed via all APIs as well as SQL, and arbitrary nesting of functions is possible this way. See the in-depth discussion on the mailing list.

Open Database Alliance

BlackRay has become the first Non-MySQL derived database project to join the ODBA. Felix has also been elected to serve on the board of directors and is the proposed Vice-Chairman of the organization. A formal board meeting will take place in April, as part of the MySQL Conference.

Other Stuff

Also, on a different Note: It is close to Valentine’s day, and the FSF Europe has started a little campaign. No, not about flowers and chocolates, about the love for free sowftware.

I love Free Software!

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Artwork for OSCON is ready

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Thanks to the guys at FORMER03, our media agency, we are happy to present the artwork for our OSCON 2009 booth 424.


blackray_artwork

We are looking forward to seeing you there. Don’t forget to ask for your free BlackRay T-Shirt (while supplies last).

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SoftMethod Forge open for Business….

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

After many months of deliberation, choosing TRAC plugins, subversion authentication mechanisms, and other stuff, we have come to a conclusion!

First of all, we no longer use TRAC. Sorry to say this to the guys at Edgewall – TRAC does kick ass. But, it does SUCK at maintaining multiple projects. We have evaluated many plugins. They are all crap. Sorry, no offence to the guys making them. TRAC simply is NOT designed for multiple projects

Enter the stage: Redmine!

So it is writtten in Ruby, on rails. As a kid, rails and railways ruled my daily schedule. What about now? Ruby on Rails kicks ass – and not my ass I must add! Thx @rubyonrails! You guys are awesome.

Ok, so we do not know the language it is made with. Actually similar to TRAC – remember anyone excited to work themselves into Clearsilver, Genshi and NEON? Nope. Nope. Nope!

Learning Ruby does work out to be fun. It ain’t quite as cool as Java. But, for a dynamically typed language, it is quite structured, and after doing the tutorials 1-4 I do kick ass as a Ruby Ninja (hey, please DO protect me in combat!)

Now that the forge is up, be agile, be quick, be nimble and tell me anything that did not work…..

Keep busy! Felix

PS: See you at https://forge.softmethod.de

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BlackRay is online!

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Welcome to the new home of BlackRay, our high performance database. We hope you enjoy your time around here and that you will take a chance and test drive the software we are offering.

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