Software Engineering Radio

Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Michael Hunger

Michael Hunger of Neo Technology, and a developer on the Neo4J database, joins Robert to discuss graph databases. Graph databases fall within the larger category of NoSQL databases but they are not primarily a solution to problems of scale. They differentiate themselves from RDBMS in offering a data model built with graphs rather than tables. Michael provides insight into many conceptual questions including: What is a graph? Is the world a graph? When are graphs a better representation of a problem than tables? When does a graph database outperform a relational database? How do graph databases scale? Michael also provides some insights into how thinking in terms of graphs changes the way that engineers view their domain. Graph databases are able to natively support queries that would be nearly impossible to express in SQL. The discussion also covers the consistency models of graph databases and an overview of the development environment for graph databases. Finally, the guest gives an overview of the emerging graph database space and where we are on the adoption curve.

• Graph Database on Wikipedia
• neo4j
• GraphConnect 2012/2013
• Graph-database.org
• Graph Databases Book
• Michael Hunger interviewed about graph databases and other persistence technologies.
• Graph Databases, NoSQL and Neo4j
• Twitter’s FlockDB
• Michael Hunger’s blog
• Michael Hunger on Twitter
• Neo Technology
• Neo4j on Twitter
• Neo4j on GitHub

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Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Martin Fowler and Pramod Sadalage

In this episode, we talk with Pramod Sadalage and Martin Fowler about database evolution and agile database development. We discuss the basic challenges for working with a database in an agile development culture and how to include database design and most of all, database evolution, in the usually short development cycles of modern software development methods. We talk about continuous integration for database-related code changes using scripted database schema changes, the usage of multiple database schemas to overcome centralized deployments for development teams, how to migrate data in incremental steps, and what tools can help in this agile environment. We discuss how to break down database refactorings in small and incremental steps, one of the most important parts of integrating database changes into an agile development flow.

• Database Refactorings
• Evolutionary Database Design
• Martin Fowler
• Refactoring Databases – Evolutionary Database Design
• Recipes for Continuous Database Integration

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Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Don Box and Doug Purdy

Host(s): Markus
In this episode we discuss Microsoft’s OSLO platform with Doug Purdy and Don Box. We briefly discuss what OSLO is in general and then look at the various components of OSLO. We also look at how OSLO fits in with the general Microsoft strategy and how it compares to other DSL/Model-driven approaches. We then look at language modularization and composition and discuss the similarities with XML and Smalltalk. Finally, we discuss possible integrations of OSLO with other MD* approaches and technologies.

Links:

• Don’s Blog
• Oslo Videos from PDC
• Doug’s Blog
• Oslo Developer Center

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