Dear all,
in issue 20/2005, our favorite (German ;-)) computer magazine c't (http://www.heise.de/ct/) calls for a "database contest". The original call and further information (in German) is available online at http://www.heise.de/ct/05/20/156/ an English translation can be found at http://firebird.sourceforge.net/connect/ct-dbContest.html
Since we think, it would be a pity, if MonetDB would not participate in this contest, we decided to give it a try. Here at CWI, Stratos is currently looking at how to port the Dell's "DVD-Store" reference implementation (cf. http://linux.dell.com/dvdstore/) to MonetDB. Creating the database and loading the data needed only minor changes of the provided scripts. The next step will be to setup the middleware implementation for the webserver. We plan to use JSP/JDBC, here. Next to the web-application, we also plan to implement a MonetDB-specific driver for DVD-Store's "client-simulator" to allow direct client-server communication. Additionally, Fabian is busy improving the client-server communication (see his recent mails on this list).
Of course, other MonetDB-developers/-users are more than welcome to also participate in the c't database contest effort, maybe using other middleware languages like PHP or Perl (Steffen? ;-)). If so, please feel free to let us know, and to ask for support (if necessary ;-)).
We will keep you posted about our progress.
Regards from A'dam,
Stefan