MegaHotPot Readings Blog and Abstract for Upcoming Database Middleware Presentation

(Readings Blog and Abstract combined per Dr. Zheng's request - mtm)


Well, the MegaHotPot presentation is coming right up on Tuesday, and we're hammering out the last details.  We hope to live up to the great presentations that we've already heard from, and equally hope to set the standard for future presentations.

For those who would like to do some readings before the presentation, we have presented six readings in two categories below - 3 from scholarly journals (free PDFs) and 3 casual readings (from well-known web sites).  

The scholarly journal readings are quite dense, while the casual readings are very light.  Taken together, they give a good overview, good examples, and technical details of database middleware.  Give them a once over and see if you agree.

Scholarly Journals:

Transforming Heterogeneous Data with Database Middleware: Beyond Integration

http://dbs.informatik.uni-halle.de/Lehre/Integr/stuff/debull99.pdf

--- For those who want a highly technical read, with a few graphics thrown in for good measure.  It's quite a dense read, but it's just six pages so it's not overly exhausting.  Good article.

Grid Enabled Relational Database Middleware

http://hep.ac.uk/papers/GGF3Rome2001.pdf

---DataGrids as they relate to DB Middleware discussed here.  Also pretty technical, but again not very long.  These best part about this article are the different examples they use to show DB middleware in action.

Web Client and ODBC Access to Legacy Database Information: A Low Cost Approach

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2233436&blobtype=pdf

--- This is an older article, but it's just five pages and sums up a lot of ODBC/Legacy issues very nicely.  Definitely Worth a Read.

Casual Reading:

What Is Middleware? Web site

http://www.middleware.org/whatis.html

--- Great starting place to learn about middleware, and has a nice little section on DB middleware, too.

Open Database Connectivity - Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Database_Connectivity

--- I'm a wikipedia fan, and this nice summary article shows why.  Talks about ODBC and how it relates to other DB middleware types.  If you don't know much about ODBC, give this a read.

ODBC Microsoft Article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/110093

--- ODBC talk straight from Microsoft.  This reads a little like a sales pitch, but I think it's a good basic coverage on ODBC that takes the above Wiki article and extends even further.  The funniest header in this article is "What's So Great About ODBC?"
Classic Microsoft. :)

_____
Abstract of presentation, as presented by Bing:

Abstract of presentaion--Database Middleware
In our presentation, we would start from basic introduction of middleware, different types of middleware,and then dig into our main topic, which is database oriented middleware. we would both provide detailed explanation of different kinds of database middleware and empirical demonstration of one database middleware, which is ODBC.

You would actually learn how database middleware works and differenciate database middleware from other middlewares. With ODBC demo, you would know intuitively how database middleware work and how to connect databases or applications via database middleware.

Our presentation is the second one on week 5. Hope everyone enjoys!

Here is the tentative link through our google presentation: http://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0Ae7CQJaENDlQZGNuc3g5MndfMjM4Y214Njg3ZjU&hl=en