When a team of developers write code for a fairly large project, they typically use a version control system for their source code. One of the standard uses is to create branches and migrate changes in one branch to another branch. In sophisticated version control solutions such as git, recent changes to one branch can be captured as a package of diffs and then applied to other branches of the code being developed by other groups of users. 

The idea behind Runtime Data Differencing is to apply the diffs at the time the code is executed and not at the time the application is built from source code. This brings some of the advantages to source code control to the problems of complicated application deployments. In particular it can help solve the Component Evolution and the Staging to Production problem. It can also allow an administrator for an application who performs complex administrative tasks to get some of the advantages of a source control system for the administrator's changes.

The focus of the solution is on tables and overlaying tables from a Component on top of the configuration or runtime data of an application. This approach forces a change in how the application is designed and written, but with great advantages gained as the applications evolve over the years.

When we were trying to choose a name for our new company we found that it is quite difficult to find a novel and interesting name that is not already taken. When we looked through the names that were already taken, we found that nautical names and terms seemed especially appealing because they were not overly specific but still had implications of "going places" and "doing useful things". 

In our search we found an attractive picture of a sailing vessel that traveled on the Nile called the Gyassa (or alternately Gaiassa). The boat has lateen sails and is used mostly for cargo. We believe that it sends the right message for our company. We want to create software that is useful and depended on for daily work activities. ...

This is the first post for Gyassa Software, a newly formed entity owned by Samuel White and Eva Cordes. Sam and Eva are the founding developers for the Stellent "Content Management System" (CMS). Three years ago Stellent was acquired by Oracle and the product became the Oracle "Universal Content Management" (UCM) product. As of last July 2010, Sam and Eva are independently employed and started their new company.

Here are some more links on Sam, Eva, and the CMS product.

The Book on the Stellent CMS Product

Documentation on the Workflow Implemented by Eva

Sam White's First Mathematics Article

This website is being run by XWiki, an open source Java software application that lets you create Wiki and Blog web sites. It is our intention to extend and enhance XWiki to do many more things. In particular, we hope to develop a solution for creating independently developed add-on components that can be easily integrated with each other.  For more on this please see Runtime Differencing Data. ...