Part of the point of my recent presentation about BigTable was that conventional databases just don't cut it for Internet Scale applications.

Drizzle is newly announced fork of MySQL that cuts out a lot of features (triggers, stored procedures, etc) with the goal of producing a highly scalable database that is suitable for Internet Scale problems.

http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Drizzle-MySQL-slims-down-on-Aker-s-...

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/07/23/drizzle/

I've been following an interesting blog by someone who is finding their way around Cache for the first time: http://cachetastic.blogspot.com/

I've added it to my feed reader.

Colossus, arguably the first digital computer, was created at Bletchley Park during WWII. In keeping with the spirit of this, we are inviting everyone to bring along items of old computing capability. If you have any old bits of computer equipment (early PCs, adding machines) or related relics (log tables, sliderules, magnetic tape, punched cards, etc) hidden away in your attic or garage, please bring them along. There will be a small display area where everyone will be able to view and discuss these items during the day.

As you'll see from the programme, I'll be running an EWD training stream at Out of the Slipstream in Bletchley Park. What I'd be interested to know is what level of training would people like. There are essentially 3 options:

1) a beginners introduction to EWD, so you'll be able to see what EWD is all about, what it does, how it works etc

2) an advanced introduction to custom tag development (which is where you can really get control over EWD)

3) an introduction to the ExtJS and Emprise Javascript Charts widget tags in EWD

Unfortunately with Out of the Slipstream being a one-day event, it's impossible to fit more than one course into the time available. So what would be your preference?

You can let me know on the day, but it would be more useful to know in advance what you all think: add your votes as comments to this thread.

Many thanks
Rob

Some of you may have noticed that right after our Bletchley Park conference, there will be a little motor race nearby.

Yes, the Formula 1 circus will be at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix the weekend after our conference. A chance to watch professional drivers in seriously fast cars getting out of the slipstream. If Lewis Hamilton had taken this advice last weekend in Montreal he might not have rear-ended that Ferrari ;)

All reasonably priced tickets for the race itself already are sold out, but there are still some tickets available for the Friday practice sessions (from £49) and the Saturday qualifying sessions (from £69), so why not make a bit of a weekend of it.

BTW because Silverstone attracts a lot of visitors, hotel rooms leading up to the weekend are likely to be in short supply, so don't leave it too late to book your place at our conference and your accommodation for Thursday night.

Work is underway to bring you the next UK Out of the Slipstream event. We've found another exciting and fitting venue where many a breakthrough has been made in the past. It was the hub of secret communications during the war and was saved from the clutches of housing developers by a team of volunteers who've turned it into a museum housing, amongst other things, the first semi-programmable computer. Got it yet?

We're going to spend the day in the comfort of the Mansion at Bletchley Park, a far cry from the draughty huts where hundreds of people worked on state of the art machines decyphering enemy messages during the war. We're in the process of finalising the programme and it's shaping up very nicely indeed.

We'll have the opportunity to visit the exhibitions in the huts including the computer museum. How many of the exhibits will you recognise as having worked with in the past? The evening meal will be taken in the Library in the Mansion and we're very excited about the guest speaker who will join us there (and he's not one of the people in George's photograph on the Next Events page!).

Details about the programme, the speakers and how to register will be posted soon.

The PowerPoint slides from all the SlipstreamUSA presentations are now up here.

We all enjoyed giving these presentations and, from the feedback we got, everyone enjoyed listening to them and found them both interesting and educational.

If you didn't get to attend SlipstreamUSA please do check them out - there's lots of good stuff in them and plenty you can learn.

SlipstreamUSA, next Wednesday, April 2 is almost with us.

Rob and I are looking forward to meeting everyone who has already signed up. We have an excellent programme for you with an interesting blend of topics from a exceptionally well qualified range of speakers, and possibly a couple of surprises - Rob's hooter might be one of them ;)

My previous blog entry gives you my take on the lineup.

If you haven't signed-up yet, there are just a few places left. Please register here as soon as possible if you plan to attend.

We look forward to seeing you all next week.

Just three weeks to go until our SlipstreamUSA seminar in Orlando. If you haven't already signed up, there is still time, but places are strictly limited so don't delay.

We've got a really good lineup for you. Starting off with David Rapperport talking about the benefits that Quest Diagnostics have reaped from using Ajax as a core component of their Care360 Lab Orders system. This is followed by me talking about what to do with all that data out there on the Internet and discussing the emerging technologies for working with it. Rob Tweed then provides a more in-depth look at two of the these technologies, the S3 and EC2 services from Amazon.

After the BYOB networking break we've got John Bertoglio, a very well known and respected consultant, discussing the importance of UI design in web-based applications. We'll learn how to keep the designer in control and not end up with our applications being at the mercy of the script kiddies ;)

Next up we have Larry Williams from Partners HealthCare telling us about their experiences during the migration of their three-tier application architecture from Windows to Unix. This kind of exercise always brings out some important lessons, and when you operate on the massive scale that Partners do, I'm sure Larry will have lots of interesting stories to tell.

We will wrap up the afternoon with a presentation from Chris Munt whom I'm sure many of you will know is responsible for the fundamental moving parts of both WebLink and CSP. He'll be talking about configuring large scale web-server infrastructures and providing some valuable insights into the inner workings of the various components that make up a web-server farm.

So we've got a nicely rounded and complementary set of presentations for you. They'll give you valuable guidance on how you should be building applications now and in the future. And with perspectives from both subject matter experts and from organisations that have been getting real results in the field, we hope you'll get a well informed and balanced view of what's really possible.

And if all that is not enough, we'll be convening to a restaurant for the evening followed by a designated bar where you'll be able discuss the implications of everything you've learnt late late into the night.

If you're attending InterSystems' Devcon in a few weeks time (http://www.intersystems.com/devcon2008/), make sure you visit the M/Gateway Developments (http://www.mgateway.com) booth at the Partners Pavilion. If you weren't considering attending, then maybe you should reconsider!

What we'll be announcing and demonstrating is nothing short of the new face of the web application, a set of technologies and capabilities that will fundamentally challenge opinions and preconceptions of the limitations of browser-based application. What's more, we'll demonstrate that EWD makes such a quantum shift unbelievably simple to implement.

The unique and hugely powerful EWD paradigm is now set to seriously challenge the conventional approach to web application development. Come and see the future of web applications, and discover how quickly and simply your applications could become a part of that future.