Objects and Databases Panel PodCast

The panel on Objects and Databases: State of the Union in 2006 went pretty well. There was a lot of talk about who owns the data. The O/R crowd made a credible case continued interoperability with RDBMS, while the OODB people continued to paint a picture of a pure object-oriented future. But these are just two impressions from the panel. You can hear the whole thing, thinks to Stefan Edlic, at http://odbmsjournal.org/

OOPSLA

Well, OOPSLA was amazing this year! But I'm biased, since I was program chair. I had fun meeting everybody who came from around the world to share the OOPSLA experience. This year had some consolidation and regrouping, but also gave some glimpses of what's to come.

Guy Steele gave a great talk on Fortress, a high-productivity language for the Fortran crowd. It was also a great sequel to his 1998 talk on Growing a Language. And I had fun introducing him.

I also had fun dressing up as Luke Skywalker (complete with OOPSLA badge... hey, i should scan that in) and going to OMSI. I taked with Sam Kamin about my ideas for model-driven programming, but I'm not sure I made a lot of sense. Peri Tarr dressed as Darth Vader. We developed a little skit, but didn't use it. And we decided not to do battle... although now I think we should have. One line from the skit: Luke hears Obi wan saying "Luke, Use the Fortess"!