[elephant-devel] QDBM Support

[Robert L. Read]

On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 10:41 -0500, Ian Eslick wrote:
> The answer to all of this, I think, is having a native lisp version  
> that has BDB's performance and no licensing restrictions.  Then  
> supporting the other two becomes: Postmodern for a higher degree of  
> reliability as well as for distributed systems and BDB for legacy  
> reasons.
> 
> I have a pretty good idea in my head of what an all-lisp backend  
> requires and having one would lay to rest all of these discussions
> of  
> bringing up "yet another backend".  Edi Weitz and I discussed  
> collaborating on this, but unfortunately he had some other projects  
> that took priority.
> 
> Is there a small critical mass of people out there that care enough  
> about this that they'd be willing to contribute to such a project?
> I  
> don't have the time to do it on my own, but if we broke it up into  
> small projects over the next handful of months, I don't think it's a  
> ton of work.  I can put in a solid chunk of integration work in mid
> to  
> late April.
> 

I completely agree with Ian about the value of a LISP-native backend.

However, I can not personally offer to help with this.  I have in fact
abandoned my business plans for the time being and taken a normal job.
Moreover, since I did the "schema evolution" system that we used in the
Java application for Hire.com a while back, I feel more comfortable
working on that than on the LISP native backend, although I think both
are wonderful and challenging problems.

The excellent set of automated tests produced by the original authors of
Elephant (Andrew Blumberg and Ben Lee) and strengthened by Ian and
myself and others since then remain the greatest asset in undertaking
the LISP-Native backend.

I know that many of you understand most of the technical challenges in
bringing up a Native LISP backend better than I do.  However, let me ask
the question that my acquaintance Kent Beck always asks:

What is the simplest thing that could possible work?

By which I mean, is there any value in making a very simple LISP native
backend?  Forget locking, transactions, efficiency, and all that other
ocean-boiling stuff that we all know will be needed for an enterprise
application.  Can anybody build a Native-Lisp backend in a weekend?

If so, we would have an excellent "spike" solution that would inform
further efforts, and furthermore we would have an out-of-the-box
solution for demoing Elephant that would require ZERO additional
software installations.  This would be very useful, even if there are
performance and reliability limits to that backend.