mca blog

this evening i posted a new demo app based on the SSDS database cloud. this one is a rather simple 'guestbook' application that allows users to create accounts and then post messages for everyone to see. nothing unique - just something fun to build and play with.

SSDS uses the ACE Model for organizing data. it takes a bit of adjustment to start thinking this way, but that's no big deal. in ACE, you can store Entities (XML documents) of different 'kinds' in the same Container (a server in a data center). That means that, when you query that data, you need to make sure you get only the kinds of entities that make sense for the query. again, a bit more work, but i like the flexibility. i think of SSDS as a big UNION of data tables all ready for searching.

anyway, this new demo app is my chance to explore multiple entity types in a container as well as authenticating via browser or HTTP basic (all from the same codebase) and caching of queries (rght SSDS supports ETags for single items, but not lists). i am also interested in how SSDS will perform if/when lots of folks define accounts and start adding messages to the guestbook.

so help me out. go ahead and visit the guestbook, create an account and start adding messages. i'll be posting there regularly for the near term and, if things go well, i might take some time to add other features to the demo, too.