For those whose interests bend more toward web application development, some recent movements in the industry.
MySQL + Oracle = ?
MySQL, the open source database used by a huge number of websites (including ones we’ve developed) is now owned by database industry gorilla Oracle as a result of Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems. Sun bought MySQL AB last January. What this means for the MySQL database is still unclear, but we’re keeping an eye on it. MySQL’s Community Server is licensed under the Gnu Public License (GPL), meaning the software can be taken by other interested parties and built on. But source code control is not the only way to kill a development ecosystem.
State of the Internet: According to Akamai
Akamai, a content distribution network, released their State of the Internet report for Q4 of 2008. Globally, the number of folks getting connected to the Internet continues to increase (28% year-over-year) with average connection speeds hovering around T-1 (1.5 Mbps) speeds. South Korea tops the list at an average connection speed of 15 Mbps. Details at http://www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet/.
Cloud Computing: Google App Engine Adds Java Support
Google App Engine, Google’s offering in the cloud computing arena, released preliminary support for Java. Cloud computing is the concept of running Web sites and applications across a bunch of different physical servers and promises greater scalability on a “pay-per-use” model. If you’re a client of our website hosting, you’re already taking advantage of the cloud—Dayspring uses Amazon’s S3 cloud services to reliably backup our clients’ websites and data.
Tags: akamai, amazon s3, cloud computing, google app engine, mysql, newsletter, Oracle, statistics
