15th May 2008

Dear MDUG Members,

First a reminder that MDUG's AGM is on the Thursday 22nd May 2008. 

We have needed to change the venue this year and instead of the Langham, it will now be at the Westin, 205 Collins St, Melbourne (near corner of Swanston St), in Executive Room 1.  The schedule will be 4:15pm for registration, 4:30-6:00pm for AGM and presentation and 6:00-7:00pm for canapes and drinks.  

This year, we are fortunate that Jan-Eike Michels, from the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory, is visiting at the time of our AGM.  As you will see from his biography his expertise lies in XML and he will present on  XMLQueries, XMLTable scenarios, and  XMLIndexes.  It is an interesting new technology. Speakers of this calibre aren't often available - so please take advantage of presentation!

I look forward to seeing you there.

Yours sincerely,

Ric Techow

MDUG Secretary

Jan-Eike Michels Bio

   Mr. Michels represents IBM on the ANSI/INCITS/H2 and ISO/JTC1/SC32/WG3
   committees responsible for standardizing SQL and SQL/XML, while working
   closely with the IBM DB2 SQL and XML development teams. He is also
   interested in industry standards whose specific formats are XML-based
   and has contributed to the DB2 pureXML industry bundles and downloads
   available on IBM alphaWorks. Recently he has expanded his role and
   started working with customers and business partners who are using
   (SQL/)XML, assisting them in the design, implementation, and
   optimization of (SQL/)XML solutions. Additionally, he was IBM's
   representative on the JSR 225 Expert Group, responsible for
   standardizing the XQuery API for Java™ (XQJ), and the editor of the XQJ
   specification until 2006. Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Michels received his
   M.S. degree in computer science in 2000 from the Technical University of
   Ilmenau, Germany.