Just in time for the upcoming XML conference the MarkMail team (none other than Mark Logic's XQuery gurus Jason Hunter and Ryan Grimm) have added the xml-dev, xquery-talk and xsl-list mailing lists to the already impressive collection of developer mailing lists in MarkMail.
MarkMail is an XQuery powered next generation email search application that not only lets you easily find a specific message in a big stack of email (over 4,000,000 messages) but also presents analytics to let you see the patterns and trends across topics.
So far I've been looking at the big picture with the XML lists and its interesting to see the activity around XQL in the late 90s when it was picking up steam . . .
the way Quilt (the real ancestor to XQuery) sort of picked up the ball at first but quickly faded . . .
and how XQuery really took over as it became a the standard (and got its own list so then things tapered off).
I also like how Jonathan Robie is the number 1 poster for all of these searches - thank you Jonathon!!
But most of all I like that I was able to find all this great info with just a few searches and some drilling down into content.
MarkMail is a great example of a content application: its data is email modeled as XML and its application layer is XQuery to take full advantage of the structure in the content and the powerful set of application buidling features XQuery provides.
And since its powered entirely from the XML content, you can read every post in the same interface. So for the Quilt search I was able to scan the messages and get a feel that most people were actually just referring to Quilt when actually talking about other things (like XQuery):
(to see this click any message in this result)
So whether you are looking for trends - such as the decline of DSSSL or your favorite entry in a perma-thread
I think you will find MarkMail a valuable resource for all things on the XML lists.
And the timing couldn't be better. Next week at the XML conference Jason will be giving the closing keynote "You're Darn Right XML has a Future on the Web" and the power of applications like MarkMail certainly underscore just what XML and XQuery can do.
And I will also be speaking at the conference subbing for Kelly Stirman in a session called "First Encounters with Open Office XML". I'll be looking that this format then doing some live demos using XQuery to query it, take it apart and put it back together.
Hope to see you there and enjoy the new XML savvy MarkMail.
Matt
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