Hello! I am evaluating Xindice for production use in a long-term project.
The criteria that I am using to evaluate competing software packages naturally
include flexibility, Open Source licensing, standards conformance, maturity
(kind of difficult for native XML databases) and long-term viability.
Although Xindice shows promise, I am concerned about a few things:
1) The web site does not seem to be zealously maintained. Early on, I
made the mistake of following one of the many links to www.xmldb.org.
I learn from the mailing list archives that this site moved to
SourceForge at least 6 months ago, yet the many links on the Xindice
site have never been updated. The Bugzilla link in the main menu
is also broken.
2) Both the user and developer mailing lists show that traffic
that was fairly steady has dropped off since the first half of 2004.
I know that this can be explained a number of ways (maturity stages,
dilettantes moving on to project du jour, etc.) and is not necessarily
a measurement of community involvement. For example, the number of
active contributors (bless you guys) is respectable.
3) Other XML databases such as eXist and Tamino offer fledgling XQuery
support. Some of the others also already provide WebDAV. Both of
these are features in Xindice's road map that have not yet been developed.
Now to my question: As users or developers of Xindice, what do you feel is
its current position in the landscape of native XML databases? How
happy are you with its long-term prospects?
That is it and thanks for your time. Please do not regard my concerns as
criticism. I focused on them instead of the positive features I see about
Xindice (ASF, license, docs, contributors, etc.) because, like you,
I am just trying to get the job done.
David Corpstein
