Randomly jumping around on the web (waiting for the final Matrix trailer to download) I discovered Apache Xindice, a native XML database written in Java. It’s very read focused – getting XML documents into the system is pretty easy, querying them with XPath is pretty easy, updating them with XUpdate is not. I’m not sure I’m a big fan of XML based command grammars like this. DOM’s interface is ugly enough, XUpdate appears to be DOM’s interface cast in XML, so you end up with something like this:

<xupdate:modifications version="1.0" xmlns:xupdate="http://www.xmldb.org/xupdate">
  <xupdate:insert-after select="/addresses/address[1]" >
    <xupdate:element name="address">
      <xupdate:attribute name="id">2</xupdate:attribute>
      <fullname>John Smith</fullname>
      <born day='2' month='12' year='1974'/>
      <country>Germany</country>
    </xupdate:element>
  </xupdate:insert-after>
</xupdate:modifications>

[Xindice Developers Guide]

As I said, not very pretty.

Other Notes:

• Just watched the Final Matrix Trailer – wow. Also check out the “I’m In” and “Prophecy” TV spots and the Enter the Matrix game trailer. Only disappointment: graphics on the game don’t look that great. I guess that what happens when you have to support substandard game consoles – you can’t take advantage of true power.
• Seven of the lower seeded teams in the NHL Playoffs won their opening game. Only New Jersey came out on top of the top seeds.
• As there is no hockey team in Seattle, I still root for teams from my previous home towns: Washington Capitals and Los Angeles Kings. Caps were 3-0 winners on the road in Tampa Bay tonight.
• In further hockey news, Microsoft announced “NHL Rivals 2004” for XBOX today. I wonder if it will feature the Microsoft Hockey Challenge?

Added a link to the Rotor Community Site. Haven’t had a chance for much spelunking, but it looks cool. Currently offers the SSCLI and an HPC project up there for participation.

Harry Pierson writes:

I see Luke has resurfaced after going dark for 24 hours straight. I wonder if he was handling feature requests?

I apologize in advance to anybody who expects me to work 24×7 churning out new features and bugfixes for SharpReader because it’s just not going to happen. I actually have a full-time job, a wife, two kids, and there’s an unconfirmed rumour that I sometimes spend part of what little spare time I have left away from the computer.

While I definately plan to address bug-reports and feature-requests for SharpReader, you’ll have to be patient. It took me a while to get SharpReader to a state in which I felt confident enough to release it (I started on it last year as a pet-project to teach myself C#), and it will take a while for new features to be addressed.

Sorry…

[Luke Hutteman’s Weblog]

No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that you should work on SharpReader 24×7. I meant that it would take at least 24 hours to sift thru the email, blog entries, bug reports and feature requests that SharpDevelop generated. Everyone I read seems to have an entry about it – I would imagine that’s pretty overwhelming.

I’m wrote that I was willing to pay for SharpReader, but I still wouldn’t want you or anyone to sacrifice family, job, sanity, etc. I only have one kid, but he’s only 7 weeks old. And my full-time job takes me away from home for days at a time. Not that I have it better or worse than you – just that I’ve just taken a crash course in choosing between coding and real life so I think I know how you feel.

Awesome work on the 0.9 release. I eagerly await the next version, but I can be patient.

I’ve been using SharpReader all day – like everyone else. I love it, but I do have a couple of feature requests. I love the folder view – click on “subscribed feeds” and it shows every entry in every blog you’re subscribed to. However, since not everyone uses the same format for dates, the “sort by date” feature doesn’t always bring the unread entries to the top. Can we get a “only show unread” filter? And I’d like a simple method to skip to the next unread entry (Syndirella uses the space bar for this).

I see Luke has resurfaced after going dark for 24 hours straight. I wonder if he was handling feature requests?

Harvester is fun. RssBandit is better. SharpReader Owns.
[Chris Hollander: Objective]

Everyone seems to agree with Chris. Me too. Wow, the threaded view is awesome. And it has filtering too, but not quite what I was looking for. Like Brad, I’d throw money at SharpReader. Looks like I’ll need to add support for the image RSS tag, since SharpReader will show it.