ORACLE 11g Database - Very Cool new Features
Attended a presentation by Andy Mendelsohn, SVP Oracle Inc on Oracle 11g. The quote from Alfred Northhead (mathematician) that he used to describe what his organization was trying to support resonated with me: The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and preserve change amid order.

I am convinced that that the Oracle will continue to be the leader in database technology for the next several years. Andy talked about some very cool features that they expect to release in 11g:

• Database Appliances that can be easily installed within a grid
• Flashback Query Functionality: Ability to execute queries with an earlier effective date. This feature will be huge for audit and data retention requirements.
  
• Change Management Features: Simplified regression testing of production database activity and enhanced SQL performance test automation and analysis using new features to log production activity and replay it in test.
  

In addition, the Database Vault feature (released with 10g) to protect information from DBAs and system administrators has been hugely popular and is being ported to the 9i release.

Very Cool!

Interesting Google Gadget (Widget) Statistics
Came across this very detailed post by Niall Kennedy. Google seems to be leading the webtops in the number of widgets available in the gallery. The top ten include: Date&Time, Calendar, Driving Directions, etc. Productivity Tools are the top category.

A nice summary post by Hooman @ Clearspring had pointed me to the detailed post by Niall.

For those who regularly visit my blog - my apologies for not posting for over 3 weeks. I have been very busy juggling 2 jobs!

Movies on Demand: Jaman
Jaman.com drew some attention at the DEMO 2007 conference. Here is a link to their presentation at the conference. They have taken a different approach by building a movie player instead of using one of the several widely used existing ones. The downloadable player has an integrated web browser, something that I always thought a downloadable desktop app should have. I believe there will be more of these apps released over the next few years.

The goal is to allow users to rent and buy the 99% of world movies that are never released at the local cinema. The prices are quite reasonable - $1.99 to rent and $4.99 to buy a movie. Will try the