MySQL 5.0

I just read that MySQL 5.0 is now available from Jeff Nolan's excellent SAP Ventures Blog. It is pretty impressive. Stored procedures/functions, triggers, views, archive storage, and a data dictionary start to make this look like a real enterprise-class player. Open Source software continues to make impressive in-roads into the enterprise software market. I wonder whether it is ready to be the engine of an enterprise-size data warehouse.

Combine MySQL with the emerging products proliferating from a number of open-source BI vendors (e.g., Pentaho, BIRT, OpenI), and you start to question why customers would want pay large amounts of money for most of the same functionality they can download off of SourceForge. I don't think we're quite there yet, but two years from now, the major players are going to have to come up with products of demonstrably higher value than what they offer now if they hope to compete with where Open Source BI software is going.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is currently one of the hottest topics amongst the technology cognoscenti. Tim O'Reilly has been promoting this idea for some time, and I love reading his thoughts and those of his colleagues at the O'Reilly Radar blog (http://radar.oreilly.com/). This slide is a really nice summary of many of the ideas, and I think it's influence will be increasingly felt across all software vendors, including those in the enterprise space.

A Compendium of Improvisational Guitarists Deserving Wider Recognition

This was originally posted to rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz about a year ago:

Dear friends,

Through the amazing resource that is this newsgroup and my own exploration, I've discovered many wonderful improvisational guitar players that I had never heard of before over the last year. I navigated to a lot of websites, listened to the clips, and wind up buying the CDs of many artists who I felt had a very distinguishable, personal voice. My own proclivities tend towards very modern guitar music, so artists that would fall under the "fusion" or "avant-garde" labels have a very strong representation in this list. However, there is no shortage of players on this list who can burn on "Joy Spring" or "Countdown" with the best of 'em.
I have no affiliation with any of these artists, other than to respect them for devoting their lives to an art form and instrument I cherish. I hope this list will offer many of you the chance to experience the thrill of discovering someone you never heard of previously.
If there are other artists that you believe are deserving of wider recognition, please add to this thread along with a link to their websites, and we can generate some interest in the work of our brethren.

Best Regards,
Nenshad Bardoliwalla

Adam Rogers http://www.crisscrossjazz.com/artist/RogersAdam.html
Andrew Cheshire http://www.users.voicenet.com/~joule/cheshire.html
Prasanna http://www.guitarprasanna.com/
Alex Skolnick http://www.alexskolnick.com/
Andre Bush http://www.andrebush.com/
Brad Shepik http://www.bradshepik.com/
Bruce Arnold http://www.arnoldjazz.com/
Bruce Eisenbeil http://www.eisenbeil.com/
Dan Faehnle http://www.danfaehnle.com/
John Catler http://microtones.com/
Dave Creamer http://www.davecreamer.com/
Dave Fiuczynski http://www.torsos.com/
Gene Bertoncini http://www.genebertoncini.com/
David Gilmore http://www.dgilmore.com/
David Torn http://www.splattercell.com/
Derek Bailey http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mbailey.html
Henry Kaiser http://www.henrykaiser.net/
Brad Buethe (Fog) http://www.enigmaterial.com/jazz/jh2003/jh03_buethe1.html
Fred Fried http://www.fredfried.com/
Fred Frith http://www.fredfrith.com/
Nels Cline http://nelscline.com/
Liberty Ellman http://www.libertyellman.com/
Jackie King http://www.jackieking.com/
James Blood Ulmer http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Quarter/7055/Ulmer/Disko-ulmer.htm
James Emery http://www.james-emery.com/
Jay Azzolina http://www.jayazzolina.com/
Joe Morris http://www.joe-morris.com/
John Stowell http://www.johnstowell.com/
Shawn Lane http://www.shawnlane.com/
Jonathan Kreisberg http://www.jonathankreisberg.com/ Khabu Doug Young http://www.dkmjf.net/ducret.htm
Lorne Lofsky http://www.lornelofsky.com/
Chuck Underwood (Mantra) http://www.phillipsmusic.net/chuck/
Marc Ducret http://www.screwgunrecords.com/page_a.php?pageid=collaborators&sub=ducret
Michael Coppola http://www.9string.com/
Mike Moreno http://www.mikemoreno.com/
Mordy Ferber http://www.mordyferber.com/
Tisziji Munoz http://www.tisziji.com/tisziji/Default.htm
Neil Haverstick http://www.microstick.net/
Ron Affif http://www.fantasyjazz.com/html/affifrbio.html
Sheryl Bailey http://www.sherylbailey.com/
Sid Jacobs http://www.sidjacobs.com/
Steve Cardenas http://www.stevecardenasmusic.com/
Sylvain Luc http://alexandre.lacombe.free.fr/
Pete McCann (Mahavishnu Project) http://www.mahavishnuproject.com/
Tim Cummiskey http://www.tc7string.com/
Vic Juris http://www.steeplechase.dk/steeplechase/query.cgi?query=Juris&category=artist
Wayne Krantz http://www.waynekrantz.com/
Willie Oteri http://willieoteri.com/

Why software sucks - scottberkun.com

Scott Berkun has written a terrific book, the Art of Project Management, published by O'Reilly. His frank take on "Why software sucks (and what to do about it)" should be read by anyone in the industry.

My daughter sucking her thumb...in utero!

Technology is just unbelievable. Cari Jaquet, a really great gal whom I work with at Hyperion, was sweet enough to give my wife and I a gift certificate to 3D Baby Vu so we could check out what our daughter was going to look like. The procedure is very similar to any other ultrasound, except that they have this very advanced visualization technology that allows you to see the baby in all his/her glory. So this is one of the first pictures of our little girl, three months before she makes her debut. Well, hopefully three months! I'm not sure we're quite ready for her yet.

An Introduction to Nenshad

Hi, my name is Nenshad, and I'm finally joining the blog world. I have no idea how much I will get to write on a weekly basis, but I figured I would give it a shot. I have a huge diversity of interests: Aesthetics, Artificial Intelligence, Audio Engineering, Comparative Religion, Composition, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Consciousness, Databases, Evolutionary Psychology, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Data Mining and Data Visualization, Developmental Biology, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Guitar, Information Architecture, Jazz, Mathematics, Neural Networks, Operating Systems, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Social Psychology,Statistics,Support Vector Machines, Technology Product Strategy, Zoroastrianism.

I'm a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Hyperion Solutions, Inc., in Santa Clara, California. My focus is Business Intelligence technologies, although I have worked on a lot of intersecting enterprise software technology areas as well, especially CRM, thanks to my erstwhile employer, Siebel Systems, Inc. I'm also soon to be a dad in December 2005. I am really excited and pretty frightened at the same time, but I think that is natural. Finally, I am an avid musician, although you wouldn't know it from my practice habits these past few years. I've played guitar and percussion for over twenty years and even foolheartedly recorded a jazz CD where I played all of the instruments myself.

I will try to touch on many of them at various times in my blog's evolution. Comments, especially those of the inciteful variety, are welcomed. Let's get this show on the road.