overview of nosql @ #tdc2010

before write specifically about nosql track, i have to say that #tdc2010 was a huge and successful event, probably one of the most important in brazilian technology event's calendar, i think that jorge diz (coordinator of test track) defined well the event as the woodstock of the i.t. which bringed to the same place lot's of developers from different clans (java, .net, ruby and python just to mention the languages). i'm so proud to be part of that organization… the event enabled connections that would be almost impossible in traditional events that usually are focused on just one language or environment (what unfortunately promote clans) – those new connections will enable all of us expand our current networking. kudos for globalcode and all tdc coordinators.

now i'll write about the #nosql track: it was sooooooo cool! we started our track at the main auditorium, which were webcasted (with hundreds watching the presentations at their home across the country and, in some cases, in different countries!). i think one great point that we had at nosql track was the connections between the talks… each talk contributed to the next in terms of concepts and tools.

the first talk mauricio de diana helped us understand a bit of the concepts behind the nosql buzzword, explained to us (using simple words) things like acid vs. base, cap theorem and many other things. the next talk john presented to us a comparison between some (most important/used) nosql technologies available, this approach gave to the audience a great overview of those tools.

just after the john's presentation we had to leave the auditorium and move to our room to watch gleicon show us his "pet project" (in fact this particular tool is in production in several projects that he conducts) called restmq (a rest based message queue) that uses redis as its default backend, one nice thing about gleicon's presentations is that all of them are focused on real usage scenarios (solutions for our day-by-day problems… not focused on solutions of problems that just huge traffic web sites has). one observation here is that gleicon was "competing" with josé valim (just to remember you josé valim is core developer of rails and is direct involved on rails 3 development) talk at main auditorium (from ruby track) and even facing this concurrency gleicon kept the room crowded – kudos for gleicon! after gleicon we had a pause for lunch.

after lunch we had my presentation about graph databases, a theme that i love and few people are talking about (if you like the theme and have some experience with that, contact me you may be presenting your experience in our next event). during my talk i presented few concepts behind graphs and showed how we can, easily, manipulate graphs. i also presented openspotlight as real example (outside social network world) on how graph databases can be used to model as a real application. the last talk of the track (after that we would have light talks about real cases here in brazil) was from edmar ferreira talking about big data, edmar has a broad and privileged view of the theme as main editor of escalabilidade.com web site (a web site focused on high scalability technologies/solutions). he presented to us how easy is to start on this area and also gave to us several examples (from medicine, social-network to entertainment industry). after big data presentation we started with the nosql cases session.

one important point which enables people (and mainly companies) adopt a technology is: cases. worldwide cases are the first thing that people care about.. and nosql cases around the world are easy to find (digg, twitter, foursquare, facebook, etc..). but after the worldwide cases… people look for local cases! local cases are the real enabler to technology adoption, 'cos it shows to people that someone near them are working on that (and if there is people working on that it's easier to get help or contract people to work with).

we had 6 local cases in different areas: start-ups (web or not), open source project, enterprise and worldwide institution. the first case was presented by vladimir rocha that showed us how his company are using cassandra to discovery video content (based on sound recognition), than we had the boo-box case presented by felipe vieira explanning to us how redis are helping them to scale their web site without expending tons of money (after adoption redis they could disconnect 2 dedicated machines from their cloud setup). the next case was presented by mauricio maia, a well know hacker that also worked at boo-box, his presentation showed us how he is using mongodb with geolocation in his new product topical.

the next session of use cases started with luis fernando teston presenting our case (i work with him)  implementing polyglot persistence. after teston we had a presentation from julio viegas that told us how spc (a huge and traditional company that provided consumer protection service) is implementing cassandra. to finish the day luciano presented to us how bireme is using nosql started 20 years ago and he shared a bit their needs/problems.

so… that it! in summary this was our track! here are the links for the presentations:

and here are some photos from nosql track:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

 

to finish this post i'd like to thank once more to globalcode team that first had the courage to give-up of their total control of the event and invite some mad people (like me) to coordinate the tracks, i'm also grateful for all the presenters, a special thanks goes to valdir and edson that helped me as volunteers all day long at #nosql track, and my main thanks goes to all the attendees of nosql track and other tracks that stayed at the main auditorium for the first two presentations as well all the attendees that were watching via webcast.

cheers!