Bye-bye Blogger. Hello WordPress

Author: Sudarshan Murthy

We have ported this blog to a WordPress installation on our web server. We made this change because, frankly, we were tired of fighting with Blogger: mostly with the myriad of div and span HTML elements Blogger adds.

This blog will remain on Blogger, but we will no longer post any new entries here. We will do our best to redirect links to the old blog entries, but please head on over to our new blog home.

PS: We thank awanu at idu-adu.com for helping us with this migration.

IT Services pioneer F.C. Kohli joins the Board of The Else Institute

Author: Sudarshan Murthy

I am pleased to announce the appointment of F.C. Kohli to the Board of Directors of The Else Institute. Made at the institute's recently-concluded annual board meeting, this appointment enhances the institute's influence world-wide, particularly in the IT services sector.

I first met Mr. Kohli a few years ago when I attended a meeting of the board of India's Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) program: He was the board chair; I was a newbie member. Frankly, before that meeting, I had wondered if much of what I had heard about Mr. Kohli's accomplishments could be true. I had especially wondered how one person could have accomplished so much in one lifetime. Well, seeing Mr. Kohli in action in that meeting clarified it all for me: If there is anyone that could accomplish a lot, it had to be Mr. Kohli.

Database-research pioneer Len Shapiro joins The Else Institute

Author: Sudarshan Murthy

I am pleased to announce that Prof. Leonard Shapiro (Len) has joined The Else Institute as the Principal Researcher in Information Management. This addition increases the institute's research depth, enhances its influence, and makes available a great resource to the institute's researchers and to its beneficiaries.

I have known Len for over 10 years now: We were both affiliated with the Data Intensive Systems Center and Portland State University. We have discussed many database research topics at Database Reading Group meetings: first at the Oregon Graduate Institute; then at Portland State University.

Len is an accomplished researcher, an excellent teacher, and a successful industry consultant. He invented the Hybrid Hash Join algorithm used in modern relational database management systems. And, two of his publications are among the most-cited articles in database research.

On behalf of the staff, volunteers, donors, and friends of the institute, I extend a warm welcome to Len. I look forward to working with him on exciting research projects and also to reading his posts on the institute's blog.