Ingres Says 'I Do' To Facebook Wedding Application

Ingres, supplier of an open source database system, has said "I do" to building a new Facebook application for planning weddings.

It now serves as the database underlying a social networking site, Connected Weddings, where the personal interests of friends and relatives may result in their being seated together.

The application has a home page at ConnectedWeddings.com. Clicking on the "Click here to get started" button takes you to a Facebook page, where users have the option of building a wedding Web site within Facebook and making their personal information available to the application. The application will leverage personal information, from friends and relatives who grant it permission to do so, to formulate recommended seating arrangements for the reception, based on shared interests. Facebook information also can be used to help build the wedding invitation and the guest list. It can serve as a worldwide collaboration location to interact with other members of the wedding party.

A To Do list is available with 168 items on it, along with a gallery of wedding gowns.

The Connected Weddings application was built by New Gravity Ventures, a developer of consumer applications for the U.S. and Indian markets. In addition to Ingres, it makes use of Alfresco open source content management and Red Hat's JBoss application server and other middleware. Rivet Logic, an open source consulting firm in Reston, Va., supplied expertise on integrating the pieces and provides support for the site. It contains no commercial software.

New Gravity Ventures of Arlington, Va., selected Rivet Logic to help it build the site last July, after New Gravity received a grant from fbFund, Facebook's fund for financing new applications on its platform.

New Gravity CEO Dan Kerzner said the use of open source code led to "zero licensing fees" and "minimal compatibility testing" in building the site. Building it on Facebook allowed his firm to leverage information already there, while letting Facebook's data center worry about application scalability issues.

Open source code running on the Facebook platform provides "all the benefits of proprietary alternatives -- scalability, high availability, and supportability -- at a fraction of the cost," said Emma McGrattan, VP of engineering at Ingres in Redwood City, Calif., in announcing the firm's participation today. The combination of open source code, social networking, and reduced wedding planning stress is "a winning partnership," she said.

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