After the first public release of SpaceMapper DataStore and MN8 last week I have some data to draw some conclusions. Unfortunately, on the release date, the FreshMeat announcement contained links which did not passed through the SourceForge counters
(the link was directly to prdownloads instead of the downloads section
on the status page), so I have no Idea about the downloads in the first
day. However seems that there is a lot more interest in an XML database
than in a new scripting language and even so 78% are interested in the
binaries and only 22% in the source of the database project. With the
scripting language the situation is reversed, 79% interest in the
source and only 21% in the binaries. I guess peoples are more
interested in how to write an interpreter than in using a new one 
No feedback, no bugs, no mailing list interest no contributors which is reasonable to a first public release.
What is not reasonable is that the Klez virus on somebody's computer
noticed the release and it sends thousands of virused mails with my
email address in the from. In case anyone receives one I'm really
sorry, it's not my fault, it's not from me and you can verify that by
looking at the source of the message. All the mails I send goes through
our server (194.102.233.6) which I'm sure you won't find in the
received headers.
November 11th, 2002
Just wanted to let you know that after many months of hard work a first public release of SpaceMapper DataStore and MN8 is available.
What is SpaceMapper DataStore ?
DataStore is a Java based document repository server for storing,
querying and fetching XML based documents. It is built on practical
needs allowing the storage of semi-structured (well formatted, maybe
validated, XML, XHTML and HTML) documents and un-structured documents
(TXT).
The documents are stored in conventional relational database
(Postgresql, MySQL, DB2, SAP DB) assuring that way the maximum
advantages and reliability of these products. Being built on top of the
Avalon Phoenix
framework, it allows server components to be easily developed, deployed
and shared. The documents are managed through a BEEP and/or XML-RPC
interface using a subset of the SEP (Simple Exchange Profile) protocol.
What is SpaceMapper mn8 ?
mn8 is an experimental object oriented scripting language, tightly
integrated with the net, which emulates the concepts at the core of XML
in order to simplify and make as transparent as possible information
extraction and manipulation from the WWW and XML documents.
Written in Java works with most operating systems and allows easy
reuse of the huge number of libraries available trough simple wrappers.
At this point mn8 has concepts for: HTML, HTML-Forms, Cookies, RSS,
OPML, HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP, Jabber, BEEP, XML-RPC, SOAP, MBox.
Then what is SpaceMapper ?
The SpaceMapper
effort was born from the classic Internet desire to see if there is a
better way. The effort evolved from an early RFP on the now-defunct
SourceXchange which was awarded to the Romanian open source development
firm noLimits Technologies. The project is Open Source (Apache like license) and was sponsored by the 501(c)(3) non-profit arm of media.org (Internet Mulicasting Service ) and noLimits Technologies.
For any questions related to the SpaceMapper and/or mn8 project please write to the mailto:spacemapper-user@lists.sourceforge.net mailing lists.
MN8 and DataStore
is still very young and far away for reaching it's purpose, so any
feedback, ideas, questions and constructive criticism is more than
welcomed
November 5th, 2002
"Mike's thoughts reminded me of something I really never thought I'd ever hear myself say.
I really want a Mac!
To be precise a PowerBook running Mac OS X. Gorgeous laptop, nice UI, Unix under the hood, eclipse and JDK 1.3 and 1.4. There's MS Office available for it too for those who think they need it." [James Strachan's Radio Weblog]
Oh yeah, same here, unfortunately I bought a new laptop in the same
time OSX appeared, it's a great machine, still doesn't run OSX 
. I
figure I'll just have to wait a year or two to become obsolete, or
start writing articles for some extra cash 
November 2nd, 2002
