There has not been a lot of traffic on XMLToday.org in the last few months. As a few of you may be aware, I recently moved from Annapolis, MD to Issaquah, WA in order to be closer to my family during a medical emergency. Between the move and the holidays, I have not had a lot of time to spend on XML related blog posts, though this hiatus has given me a chance to think about the directions I'm wanting to take both my own career and the various instruments that I use to blog ideas from that.

XML Prague 2013 is now welcoming submissions for presentations on the
following topics:

I've had a chance to watch the evolution of the Federally Facilitated Exchange Health Insurance Exchange Data Services Hub (FFE HIX DSH) system, and its been a fascinating case studio. The program's name is a mouthful that sounds impressive, and in certain respects it is, though in others it's actually quite simple.

The challenges of writing a blog while working full time is that sometimes the opportunities for research in depth are simply not there. I had an interesting email from Ian Jacobs, head of W3C Communication, who provided a view of the situation much closer to the ground, and that cleared up a fair amount of confusion from the sources I'd seen. Specifically, Mr. Jacobs wrote:

Quote:

One of the central challenges that vendors such as MarkLogic face right now is the limited number of XQuery developers currently in the marketplace, to the extent that it is becoming an impediment to adoption of these databases.

I don't normally drag political issues onto the pages of XMLToday, but the onslaught of bad legislation that are little more than corporate power grabs needs to be stopped. SOPA and PIPA, intended to "protect" intellectual property, looks like an open invitation not only to dismantle the open source community, but could be used to imprison people who argue against the government or against powerful corporate sponsors.

The year 2011 has been characterized by revolutionary fervor - change is everywhere, often coming out of nowhere, upending the traditional establishment that had held sway for so long. It's a motif that's played out in the streets worldwide as financiers everywhere went from being the wunderkinds and heroes of entrepreneurship to becoming grasping, thieving robber barons, at least in the public perception, and as people tossed out of work, tossed out of their homes, in short becoming the ultimate disposables, finally started fighting back.

One of the joys of being a consultant is that you go through stretches where there's not much to do, and then you get thrown into a project where you're burning 50+ hours a week, your kids have trouble recognizing you, and where you wake up with nightmares about code that simply ... won't ... work! I'm in the latter phase at the moment, though look to be wrapping up soon, at which point I'll finally get around to finishing the SVG book that I've been working on since March (sigh).