Just some technical considerations. If the CMS had no other purpose than handling metadata it would have no need of being anything more than a simple database and would require nothing more than an embedded SQLite engine (...as it was in Studio, according to what I read).

CMS is a standalone process, not only, a Windows service and the database, according to what I read on DAZ forums has changed to an obscure engine with a costly SDK. Even if there were needs for advanced DB processing, there would be no reason not to bundle e.g. PostgreSQL. Wait a moment! isn't PostgreSQL a process!?! yes it is a process because it has to run on unattended computers and log in with specific rights, things that do not look terribly reasonable in our context.

Developing a service is not an easy task and requires specialized knowledge. I myself, with a Windows programming experience dating back to Win 3.1 beta 2 and having consulted for embedded systems firms have never had to do it.

All these items point to some very important task justifying all this complexity and (more important for corporate decisions) development cost. A guy called DAZ_Rand (who was passing off as a DAZ employee), without a specific request (I always love when people answer then question they were not asked) clearly stated that there is the project of an Apple-like store. i-whatevers can rely upon hardware and OS to make them closed devices (plus a continuos corporate fight to keep jailbreakers at bay); for our context DAZ has to deploy "something" that acts as gatekeeper in order to prevent "unauthorized" accesses and here we have this thing called Content Management System, which, even from the name, hints at much more than just a simple database.

I am not saying that all this is sensible or in the interest of users, I say that technical items and statements cannot interpreted otherwise.

P.S.: a partial CV: C developer since 1986. C++ developer since 1991. Database experience as developer ranging from SQLite to DB/2 on AS/400s with pretty much everything in between in accounting software systems. From 1997 to 2009 developer for video surveillance systems firms on embedded Window and Linux boxes (my image processing experience dates back to 1987). Since 2002 Java development experience on enterprise systems. Working as a self employed software development consultant since 1997.

P.P.S: complete CV w.r.t. to databases: SQLite, dBase, Jet (Access/VB engine), SqlServer, Oracle, DB/2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache Derby, HSQLDB.

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