This page references "BlueBerry", an IBM-internal project I created in 2007. Designed to provide a search interface across multiple databases using commodity hardware, BlueBerry made unique use of over 100 surplus IBM ThinkPads. Consult the links below for more information.
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About BlueBerry - History and Future Direction - BlueBerry. |  |
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BlueBerry exists because of the Situational Applications Environment Contest, and would not have been completed without the motivation provided by the contest. History In 2005, a ThinkPlace idea submitted by Derrick Brown led to the creation of the Resource Locator application. IBM ThinkPlace Innovator Award winning, and still the only Revenue generating idea to come out of ThinkPlace, Resource Locator is the source for much of the technical and procedural experience that led to the creation of the BlueBerry concept. The success of the Resource Locator application was due to the dedication of the Resource Locator Team and the focus on conglomerating sales coverage information into a single database with a smart search engine on top. During this process it seemed logical that processing many IBM'er keyed databases by the same search engine could make it much easier to find people than existing tools. About 1 year later, I started the design of the BlueBerry project (then called Nitro) to combine as many databases as I could find - effectively creating the second version of Resource Locator, but with an expanded focus to all IBM'ers data on the intranet. Job changes, and the reprioritization of goals set the BlueBerry project into inactive mode. Motivation was needed to bring the machines back on line, establish the code base, and build the datastore that is accessed today. Months later, the SAE contest announced, and the motivation returned. Fortunately, there was a readily available historical data set was already established on the production version of Resource Locator. That starting point, and months of extra hours of work brought BlueBerry to deplpyed web application and Web 2.0 interface. Future Direction BlueBerry is designed to capture every record of data associated with a person in IBM. There are many more databases that can be researched, extracted and integrated - and the near future will see more of these added to BlueBerry. Current data, processing and throughput capacities are only about 30% of maximum, so adding more databases will be a quick process. As a platform for future applications, BlueBerry will expose more detailed interfaces, such as individual record components. Deeper linkages will be added, and expanded query syntaxes exposed. Stay tuned for more advancements, applications and visualizations. |
Learn about BlueBerry's entry in the Situational Applications Environment contest.
Search BlueBerry data (IBM internal use only):
BlueBerry was created by Nathan Harrington.