There was a lot of buzz around the Linux Foundation-backed Open API Initiative yesterday. I just wanted to see what the community thought about this as a whole. It's probably a good move to standardize some of these processes and formats, but what are the downsides? Does anyone have experience with Swagger (or know someone on your team that has)? If so, what are your thoughts on it becoming a type of universal standard?

Link to news story here.

I started creating this weekly graphic last year as a way to quickly catch people up on newsworthy stories dealing with data centers, cloud computing, big data, security, etc. I wanted to start a thread here to share it and get feedback. If it's helpful, I'll continue to share them on this thread each Friday.

Additionally, I wanted to ask, assuming I could find time to do this for a different/wider industry, what type of stories would the community like to see? Is there a different format (video, audio, text-only) that you'd like to see? Let me know what you think! Always looking for better ways to share timely information.

• This Week in Data (November 13, 2015)

@DustinB3403 I'll take this scarlet letter if it will help everyone put down their pitchforks, but I really don't plan on talking about the product much (if at all) while I'm here.

@scottalanmiller It's not channel-only. Fair critique about not listing pricing, though. Something that we'll look into, I'm sure.

I'll be interested to see how "truly" open this all becomes. Even though it is an open source project, SmartBear Software actually acquired/owns Swagger as of late-September. That's the same umbrella company that acquired SoapUI (open source API testing tool) a few years back. I think (and believe) they will handle it tactfully, but it's a tough balance to figure out between corporate revenue and open, community-based projects like this.

@Dashrender I may have a somewhat self-serving answer here. Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but have you tried R1Soft?

Apparently this is shameless plug day for me... I do think R1Soft is something you'll at least want to check out, though. A few reasons:

• It's Cross-Platform (Windows / Linux)
• Block-level, incremental backups
• (near)-Continuous Data Protection
• Won't crush server performance, so you can run multiple backups in an hour if needed

The problem is that it's not free, so my apologies there. You can try out a free trial if you'd like to at least give it a shot and see what you think.

@DustinB3403 We also just drank from the keggerator today. The beer was paid for/made/delivered a while ago. The beer that people drank on Wednesday was Wednesday's beer. The beer that they drank today was Friday's beer. It's pretty simple.

Same idea with an event. If I schedule a meeting for Thursday but nobody can attend the initial time so I change it to Friday, it is then Friday's meeting.

Think of it as each day being an actual person. If Mr. Thursday has pizza, then he leaves and gives it to Mr. Friday, it is now in Mr. Friday's possession and is therefore Mr. Friday's pizza.

Say it's illegal drugs. If Mr. Thursday has a bunch of illegal drugs. Then he hangs out with Mr. Friday, and when Mr. Friday leaves he has the illegal drugs in his possession. On his way home, Mr. Friday gets pulled over by a police officer who finds the drugs. Mr. Friday isn't going to be able to get away with saying, "Oh no, these are Mr. Thursday's drugs."

Regardless of initial intent, it is now in Friday's possession.

Here's the general arguments for each side. It helps to have context:

One group said that it was “Thursday’s pizza” with their argument being that because it was originally created and/or intended to be eaten on that day, it will always belong to that day (i.e. You’re eating Thursday’s pizza on Friday). This group what somewhat fractured because each person had slightly different ideas about whether it should be based on creation or original intent (“What if I made a pizza on Wednesday night that was intended to be eaten on Thursday but didn’t actually get touched until Friday?”). Because creation date could be a hard fact to prove, and intent is easily changed at any given point, there was a bit of indecision about which factor should actually determine the result. Still, they held strong with that theory.

The other group said that it was “Friday’s pizza” because the eating of the pizza is the primary action that each person takes with the pizza, therefore it is more important and tangible than the creation date or original intent (i.e. If I schedule a meeting for Thursday, but the stakeholders are busy and I change it to Friday, it is now Friday’s meeting). This group was united in the idea that the whole situation was relative to each person’s interaction with the pizza. The slices they ate on Thursday were Thursday’s pizza, and the slices they ate on Friday were Friday’s pizza, regardless of when they were created or originally intended to be eaten.

@scottalanmiller It's not channel-only. Fair critique about not listing pricing, though. Something that we'll look into, I'm sure.

@DustinB3403 I'll take this scarlet letter if it will help everyone put down their pitchforks, but I really don't plan on talking about the product much (if at all) while I'm here.

Apparently this is shameless plug day for me... I do think R1Soft is something you'll at least want to check out, though. A few reasons:

• It's Cross-Platform (Windows / Linux)
• Block-level, incremental backups
• (near)-Continuous Data Protection
• Won't crush server performance, so you can run multiple backups in an hour if needed

The problem is that it's not free, so my apologies there. You can try out a free trial if you'd like to at least give it a shot and see what you think.

@Dashrender I may have a somewhat self-serving answer here. Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but have you tried R1Soft?

I started creating this weekly graphic last year as a way to quickly catch people up on newsworthy stories dealing with data centers, cloud computing, big data, security, etc. I wanted to start a thread here to share it and get feedback. If it's helpful, I'll continue to share them on this thread each Friday.

Additionally, I wanted to ask, assuming I could find time to do this for a different/wider industry, what type of stories would the community like to see? Is there a different format (video, audio, text-only) that you'd like to see? Let me know what you think! Always looking for better ways to share timely information.

• This Week in Data (November 13, 2015)

I'll be interested to see how "truly" open this all becomes. Even though it is an open source project, SmartBear Software actually acquired/owns Swagger as of late-September. That's the same umbrella company that acquired SoapUI (open source API testing tool) a few years back. I think (and believe) they will handle it tactfully, but it's a tough balance to figure out between corporate revenue and open, community-based projects like this.

@DustinB3403 I like this approach a lot. It actually sounds a lot like the Chaos Monkey tool that is used in the testing/QA world to find failures in cloud-based software.

There was a lot of buzz around the Linux Foundation-backed Open API Initiative yesterday. I just wanted to see what the community thought about this as a whole. It's probably a good move to standardize some of these processes and formats, but what are the downsides? Does anyone have experience with Swagger (or know someone on your team that has)? If so, what are your thoughts on it becoming a type of universal standard?

Link to news story here.