Avi Bryant just shipped me info for his workshop for the development stream at meshU.
Avi is a bit of a genius, the developers at my office may or may not worship his mental ingenuity and technical creativity (my words, not theirs). But don’t take my/their word for it, Toronto tech scene instigator and Microsoftie David Crow sounded off last week…I trust others will follow.
Anyway, here is a bit about Avi’s workshop:
Turning the Tables: Moving Beyond Relational Storage
Google doesn’t store your GMail in a MySQL table. Your Amazon shopping cart doesn’t act_as_list. Orbitz doesn’t run a SELECT to find the best flights. But when choosing technology, nearly every new web startup will reach for a relational database. Why? Can we do better?
This workshop will take a tour through how and why many of the most successful web applications store data outside of the confines of a RDBMS. We’ll explore when you should follow conventional wisdom about persistence and when you should go your own way: whether that means using a memory store, flat files, an object database, or a data service like Amazon’s SimpleDB or Microsoft’s SSDS.
The technology you use at the beginning of a project will have a profound impact as you grow. Make a thoughtful and informed choice, and your users and developers will both thank you later.
And about the man himself:
Avi Bryant is a founder and co-CEO of Dabble DB, a venture-backed startup based in Vancouver, BC. He’s also the creator of the Seaside web framework, and has given keynotes at RailsConf, Smalltalk Solutions, and elsewhere about his unusual – some say heretical – approaches to web development.
Don’t forget to get your meshU tickets!