DataNucleus 2.2.0 release

http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=61486

Congrats to the team!

SFDC Database.com versus Windows SQL Azure

http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/preliminary-comparison-of-databasecom.html

Que le meilleur gagne ! (and it is SQL Azure :-)

Data is the Next Major Layer of the Cloud

http://www.cloudave.com/8607/data-is-the-next-major-layer-of-the-cloud-a-major-victory-for-startups/

I cannot agree more.
But Amazon is not alone, Microsoft Azure and SQL Azure also provides an efficient and well-integrated solution.

Please also note the brand new initiative from SalesForce.com with database.com

Clearly, data is the sweet spot of the Cloud.

Nasdaq Data as a Service

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/11/08/nasdaq-continues-the-data-as-a-service-trend/

We'll see more and more business data sources exposed as data services.
This is more or less what Microsoft Azure DataMarket tends to generalize.
Today it is mostly limited to read-only kind of access, but I'm confident data manipulation services will follow soon.

Now, the 2 big questions:

1. How to widely enable all these data services, 
2. and how to easily combine these external data services with other heterogeneous data models?

This is exactly where Data Services Platforms have a great role to play.

Data services client for WP7

Seen during PDC 2010:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/2010/10/28/data-services-client-for-win-phone-7-now-available.aspx

http://odata.codeplex.com/

Big data

Interesting series of videos by Jeff Jonas, "Mister Data" at IBM:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/big-data/

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data

Two problems:
1. How to deal with huge volume of data? How to exploit it, understand trends, cycles, etc. ?
2. How to bring sense, meaning into that big data?

For #1, see Attivio, ClickFox or Aqumin for new technologies being able to nicely display huge amount of real-time data.

For #2, connect data together, build a context around it. It's all about semantics.

Data as a Service example in the Finance Industry

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/10/26/stock-data-api-hints-at-future-of-data-as-a-service/

Microsoft WCF Data Services CTP1 for .NET 4

and SilverLight 4:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/2010/10/26/announcing-wcf-data-services-oct-2010-ctp1-for-net4-amp-sl4.aspx

JSON Data Services

Still, very limited at the moment but worth tracking...
http://adroitlogic.org/samples-articles-and-tutorials/16/79-json-data-services.html

It is part of the UltraESB offer.

jOOQ

Seen this article on TheServerSide: here.
Product page: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/jooq

How should we react when reading posts like this in 2010?
It's like being back 15 years earlier.
How is that possible to write so many irrelevant statements in a single post?

The so-called "pragmatic" approach has given birth to so many useless frameworks like this one.

The good news is there is still a need for a comprehensive data manipulation solution.

JBoss Teiid

http://www.jboss.org/teiid
Seems to me this is a basically a kind of repackaging of their good old  metamatrix offer, with all its benefits and limitations.
Anyway, it seems RedHat is going in the right direction.

Any feedback from user would be welcome.

The importance of Data in SOA infrastructure

Interesting thread seen on LinkedIn: here.

Considering data is key when deploying a successfull SOA.

Sometimes services encapsulating data tend to reinforce silos instead or reducing them.

This is a kind of paradox but this is true.

A real data strategy should be at the heart of SOA, before anything else.

As I always said, data has been the failure of most large architectures: CORBA, EJB, etc.

NB: seems to me in the .NET world, data is now considered as a first citizen.

Restart that Blog

I haven't posted anything here since more than one year.

I have been in some personal turmoil after the acquisition of Xcalia by Progress Software.

For different reasons, I think it is the right time to restart communication around Data Services.

I have just created a LinkedIn group about Data Services, feel free to join and contribute.

And stay tuned.