Oracle and Sun Microsystems: A Reality that will Benefit DSpace and Archivists' Toolkit

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/technology/companies/21sun.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Article title: "Oracle Agrees to Acquire Sun Microsystems"


Okay, it's now a reality that one of the best database companies in the industry is acquiring a company that yes, sells rocking servers, and yes, offers its Java developers kits to adoring open-source masses; but, much more important to archivists and IT manager who run open source digital access products, the company that makes one of the supported backend database systems (Oracle) for DSpace is now acquiring the company that makes the backend database system (MySQL) for Archivists' Toolkit. WOO-HOO.

This should be huge news to the open source community that uses, programs, and installs archiving software. If you're involved in any sort of digitization project for archives, you can't walk down a sidewalk without tripping and face-planting onto DSpace in the first elevated crack in the concrete and then, two-feet later, skinning your knees as you fall over Archivists' Toolkit.

The biggest roadblock to DSpace's success has historically been that no one could figure out an easy way to move metadata from record-creation software into DSpace. Archivists' Toolkit, an record-creation software that builds information about acquired items from initial accession into a collection through to who has edited and accessed the digital item throughout its digital life, can build metadata records for archival items. It runs on MySQL, while DSpace is on Oracle or Postgresql. If someone could find an _easy_ way (because there are ways, but none is simple) to move information between the two programs, digitization would be a thousand times easier for everyone.

I suppose this is down the road, but this is great news for archives interested in digitization.