The New York Times is releasing open source software. Their database abstraction package, DBSlayer looks innovative, clever, useful, and deceptively simple. One of the things I love most about the rise of open source is that it has given organizations a framework to show off the creativity that dwells inside their walls. Companies have always had the opportunity to do so, but not the justification or rationale.
October 16, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Anyone thinking of using DBSlayer should first think what sort of denial of service attack can be launched with expensive queries. (Maybe I missed something in the docs, but it looks like clients can do arbitrary SELECT statements.)
If people would be nice I’d start using it in a heartbeat.
October 17, 2007 at 12:43 am
Is it designed to let external clients hit your database? I figured you’d only allow access to it from your own applications.
October 17, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Yeah, that definitely seems like something you’d want to limit via firewall rules. Anyway, I really like the idea of returning the results ready-to-go in JSON. Clever.