Title: Late News!

I don't normally receive news at 7 minutes past midnight on the day after editorial copy is due, but this one is somewhat useful to those who write software in C# that needs to interface with SQL or PostgreSQL databases. I wouldn't normally give so much room (I do get quite a number of releases about how wonderful such and such is), but this is different as it is a cross platform approach which is offering everyone the opportunity to participate without cost and learn from experts to boot.

db4objects, providers of the leading object database for Java and .NET, today announced the launch of ODBMS.ORG, the Internet's most up-to-date educational and research portal on object database technology. The initiative was made possible through contributions of a group of high-profile software experts, lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari. It is the first of its kind in nearly two decades, since first-generation object-oriented databases emerged in the early 1990s and subsequently fell dormant.

The open source community has created a new wave of enthusiasm that's now fueling the rapid growth of second-generation, native ODBMSs and demand for appropriate education. The new portal is designed to meet this fast-growing need for educational and research resources focusing on object database technology and the integration of object-oriented programming and databases.

Object databases (ODBMS) have long been recognized as a solution to one of the biggest dilemmas in modern object-oriented programming (OOP): the object-relational (OR) impedance mismatch. Now that OOP languages like Java and .NET are finally becoming mainstream, this problem rests at the heart of information technology.

Thus object databases are increasingly established as a complement to (not a replacement for) relational databases for efficient resolution of the OR mismatch. ODBMSs are flourishing as embeddable persistence solutions in devices, on clients, in packaged software, in real-time control systems, and to power websites.

The ODBMS.ORG portal features open source software, lecture notes, tutorials, papers and other resources for free download. It is complemented by listings of relevant books and vendors to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of available resources on object database technology.

The portal's editor, Roberto Zicari, is Professor of Database and Information Systems at Frankfurt University and representative of the Object Management Group (OMG) in Europe. His interest in object databases dates back to his work at the IBM Research Center in Almaden, CA, in the mid ?80s, when he helped craft the definition of an extension of the relational data model to accommodate complex data structures. In 1989, he joined the design team of the Gip Altair project in Paris, later to become O2, one of the world's first object database products.

The Expert Section contains exclusive contributions from internationally recognized experts including Scott Ambler, Michael Blaha, William Cook, and Carl Rosenberger. Scott Ambler is a consultant with Ontario-based Ambysoft and thought-leader of the widely recognized Agile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), and Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) methodologies.

William Cook, professor at the University of Texas, and Carl Rosenberger, chief software architect at db4objects, have contributed their ground-breaking joint paper on Native Queries (NQ), which discusses the use of programming languages like Java or .NET to express database queries that are 100% typesafe, 100% refactorable and 100% object-oriented. Native queries are poised to become the unifying standard for object-oriented queries in the same way that SQL has standardized the query interface for relational databases - replacing earlier, non-native attempts such as ODMG and JDO.

Michael Blaha, co-inventor of UML and co-author of the seminal book Object-Oriented Modeling and Design with UML (with James R. Rumbaugh), has contributed a new paper on "The Dilemma of Encapsulation Versus Query Optimization."