[news.eclipse.technology.jsr220-orm] Re: JSR243 support in JSR220ORM pro

["Robert Greene" <rgreene@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Luc,

As a public company, Versant cannot afford to ignore industry trends.  The
industry trend is towards a JSR220 API and if we want to be around at all to
support our customers we too will need to support the API.   So, by
positioning ourselves to be relevant in the future, we are serving our
customers.   You can see this same behavior in other companies, such as the
providers of Kodo, Solarmetric, who also had good intention to release JDO
2.0 compliant products months ago, but who have been delayed ......and I
would speculate due to their continued annoucements around JSR220 support.

We have great tooling support for our JDO customers in the VOA workbench.
We have one of the best JDO products ( tooling/runtime) on the market and
some would argue it is the best.   We are supporting our customer base now
and continue to support them as long as they are under maintenance
agreements.  In fact, we just released a new version of the 3.2.x product
line in support of those customers and we are nearing a GA of the VOA 4.0
product line which supports even more JDO 2.0 capabilities and has preview
support for JSR220.

However, I would point out, the entire world is moving to EJB 3.0.  Further,
it is not EJB 3.0 anymore, it is "The Java Persistence API".  The name
itself says something about the importance of what this API will mean over
time to the Java community.   Little ole Versant did not create this market,
we are simply a company reacting to it and trying to create value.  Believe
me, as a small company, the adoption of The Java Persistence API instead of
the JDO 2.0 standard comes at a huge cost that has effectively set Versant
back 2 years in positioning.   We will provide many vendor specific
extensions to the The Java Persistence API, just as we did in the JDO 1.0
days.  The Java Persistence API will evolve over time just as JDO did.

Perhaps most importantly, what we are doing here in this project is not just
a Versant thing.  It is an effort that is in collaboration with other Java
community companies and is trying to create useful and relevant tooling for
Java developers at large.   Recall how difficult it is to get into the right
college without community involvement?   There are lots of students with
good grades and sometimes that community involvment was what made the
difference of getting in or not.    Well, there is a great parallel in the
software industry these days.  If you want to be a well known and respected
company in the Java community ( getting in ) these days, you need to get
involved in some community service in addition to just making the best
product ( grades ).   Versant is committed to both providing the best
products we can and at the same time being a good community member.
Ultimately, we believe this is in our current and future customers
interests.

-Robert

Robert Greene
JSR220-ORM team lead
rgreene@xxxxxxxxxxx



"Luc" <ljgp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4338F353.5030800@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hello Robert,
>
> Robert Greene wrote:
>
> > The team currently working on this project is trying to complete JSR220
> > support before considering any other artifacts.  We just cannot do both
> > right now and it looks like JSR220 support will take us well into next
year.
> > So, it is very difficult to say.  There are lots of JDO vendors out
there
> > and it would be great if one would join in the project and contribute by
> > taking advantage of our extension points.
>
> Isn't Versant itself a JDO vendor ? Didn't you buy JDO Genie to have
> better tool support for your customers using JDO ? How are these
> customers being served now by this new course ?
>
> I still fail to see the logic in first adding support for a new
> persistency standard, and not committing to _any_ support for the
> technology you previously sold to customers.
>
> Or does Versant not even consider itself a JDO vendor anymore (you
> _could_ read that into the text you wrote I think), and they just forgot
> to tell their customers ? Customers might like to know that (half a year
> after being forced to move from Kodo JDO to JDO Genie) they have to
> prepare for another move (to EJB3).
>
> Luc.