Joe Lennon

In this article, you will learn about MongoDB, the open source, document-oriented database management system written in C++ that provides features for scaling your databases in a production environment. Discover what benefits document-oriented databases have over traditional relational database management systems (RDBMS). Install MongoDB and start creating databases, collections, and documents. Examine Mongo’s dynamic querying features, which provide key/value store efficiency in a way familiar to RDBMS database administrators and developers.

In recent years, we have seen a growing interest in database management systems that differ from the traditional relational model. At the heart of this is the concept of NoSQL, a term used collectively to denote database software that does not use the Structured Query Language (SQL) to interact with the database. One of the more notable NoSQL projects out there is MongoDB, an open source document-oriented database that stores data in collections of JSON-like documents. What sets MongoDB apart from other NoSQL databases is its powerful document-based query language, which makes the transition from a relational database to MongoDB easy because the queries translate quite easily.

Read the full article on IBM developerWorks at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-mongodb4/index.html.

In this developerWorks article, I explore the concepts behind Apache CouchDB – an open source, document-oriented database management system. CouchDB uses a RESTful JSON API and JavaScript views to interact with and report on the data stored in the database. Unlike the relational model, the model CouchDB is built on is designed specifically for use in document-oriented web applications such as blogs, wikis and discussion forums. This makes it an exciting prospect as a potential de-facto database for publishing-oriented web applications. The following is the abstract from IBM developerWorks:

Relational databases define a strict structure and provide a rigid way to maintain data for a software application. Apache’s open source CouchDB offers a new method of storing data, in what is referred to as a schema-free document-oriented database model. Instead of the highly structured data storage of a relational model, CouchDB stores data in a semi-structured fashion, using a JavaScript-based view model for generating structured aggregation and report results from these semi-structured documents. CouchDB has been developed from the ground up with Web applications as the primary focus and has its sights on becoming the de-facto database for Web application development.

Read the article in full at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-couchdb/

Back in July 2008 I wrote a tutorial titled “Use Ext, Aptana and AIR to build desktop applications” that has been published on IBM’s developerWorks website. The tutorial explores the concepts of the Aptana IDE (Integrated Development Environment), the Ext JavaScript library and the Adobe AIR platform, before walking through the process of setting up a development environment for building applications using these technologies. Once the environment is set up, a simple hello world application is created. The tutorial then concludes with the development of a simple contact management utility using Ext and deployed to the desktop using Adobe AIR.

The following is the blurb for the tutorial as found on the developerWorks website:

While Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 have been all the rage, the latest wave of emerging technologies are focusing on not only giving Web applications a desktop-like feel but actually bringing them to the desktop. The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) has led the way, allowing Web application developers to leverage their existing knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and Flex to build powerful desktop applications. In this tutorial, you will use the open source Aptana Studio IDE, the Adobe AIR plug-in for Aptana, and the open-source JavaScript framework Ext.

You can view the tutorial in full at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/os-dw-os-ext-air.html