On Oct 22, 2006, at 9:29 AM, Jeff Rush wrote:

> Greetings.  I'm a big fan of Durus and would like to see a talk
> about it at
> PyCon in Feb 2007.  The deadline for submitting talk proposals is fast
> approaching, Oct 31.
>
> Searching talk catalogs of past conferences I see that a Durus talk
> was given
> in 2005 but not in 2006.  Since development of Durus is strong, I
> think it
> would be a good topic.
>
> One item that people ask me repeatedly is why use an OODB over an
> RDBM.  They
> see how to store objects quite easily but then want information
> about how an
> OODB allows for more powerful indexing schemes, how to handle
> schema migration
> and what about replication.  Perhaps a talk about "*this* is what
> you can with
> an OODB that you can't (easily) with an RDBM" would be a good topic.

I agree that a comparison would be an interesting topic.
It would be best if the presenter were someone whose
knowledge of relational systems is grounded in experience,
and that means I am not a contender.  If anyone wants
to offer that talk, the questions will include:
How do you do queries?
How do you do joins?
What about ACID?
Why think about this?  Database problems were solved long ago.
RDBs have a deep mathematical basis, worthy of respect.
OODBs seem like anarchy.
RDBs  are language-independent.  What about OODBs?
RDB implementations are optimized through years of
real-world experience.  OODBs can't compete.
All of these questions seem reasonable to me, and worthy
of discussion.  The presenter should be aware that this is
one of those areas where people have pretty strong
feelings of loyalty for the system that they know best.

I've thought about offering a "durus update" talk myself,
but I'm not sure if there would be sufficient interest in it
at the conference.