[ADVERT]: Seeking Contributors for New Book

This is an informal request for contributors to a new book on Object Data Management - if there is enough "critical mass", an "official" Call for Papers (CFP) will be issued. I'm looking for potential contributors to discuss and share their experiences with alternatives to Object Data Management. Contributions are sought from both the user and academic communities. Topics of interest may include (but are not limited to): o Experiences "rolling-your-own" to Object Data Management. o Experiences with Object to Relational mapping products. o Experiences using particular Object Database products. o Comparisons of Object Database products for particular applications. o Use of Object Databases with Object Request Brokers. o Use of Object Databases with legacy or heritage systems. o Tradeoffs between alternative application or system designs. o Tradeoffs between alternative languages bindings for application development (e.g. Smalltalk vs. C++ vs. Java(TM)). o Persistent Java. o Benchmarking or performance studies. o The impact of standards. o Management issues in adopting Object Databases. o Cultural changes required in an organisation for the adoption of Object Data Management. o Experiences in training staff to new working methods. o Case studies. o War stories. o etc. [These bullet-points are derived from the OOPSLA '97 Workshop on Object Data Management]. I'm particularly keen to get contributions on some of the cultural, management and training issues (mentioned above), but technical contributions describing experiences with the following products would also be of interest: GemStone O2 Objectivity/DB ObjectStore Poet VERSANT IBM UDB Informix Universal Server Oracle 8 CA Jasmine Timescales would be to have the book in print by Q4 next year (sadly, it does still take a long-time to get things into print :-( ). References Some ideas about what I'm looking for (in terms of style and content) can be found at the following sites: [1] OOPSLA '97 Workshop on Object Data Management http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~akmal/oopsla97.dir/workshop.html [2] Object Databases in Practice http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~akmal/html.dir/book.html For an initial informal discussion, please email me at the address below. Thanks. akmal -- email: akmal(at)bigfoot(dot)com http://www.bigfoot.com/~akmal/