About Sphinxian


In the summer of 1998, a friend of mine and I came up with a concept for a software product that would allow even the most computer-illiterate person to quickly develop a virtual storefront to market their items on the web. It was going to be called Expedience, it was going to be written using Microsoft's Active Server Pages, and it was going to run off of a Microsoft Access Database (I loathe Microsoft Access, but it would have made installing the product simpler.) We would give the user a basic set of pages with a user interface so they could configure their own look, but we would also offer custom design for pages they needed that didn't fall into the basic set. Since I have years of experience doing applications development work, especially revolving around database design, and my friend is a talented graphic artist (obviously, she is not helping me with this site), we thought we could not fail.

We failed even to get started, and the blame is all mine. Although we had a great concept, I don't have the entrepreneurial spirit. I make a good living as a software developer, and I have no heart for marketing, accounting, or any of the bureaucratic nonsense that goes along with having your own company (just show me a computer and leave me alone.) We did, however, get to the point that we were looking at names for our company. I wanted the company to be able to match our domain name, but, as you know if you've gone shopping for domain names recently, most sensible-sounding domain names are already taken. Sphinxian.com was available and we liked the sound of it. "Sphinxian Software" probably has a better ring to it, but since the word "sphinxian" means "enigmatic" or "mysterious", we didn't want it to sound like our software was a puzzle to use (besides, I think that name was taken). So Sphinxian Designworks it became.

Last year, when it became apparent that Sphinxian Designworks was never going to make it off the ground, I started thinking of ways to use my website. I'm not big into "vanity homesites" (though this site probably resembles one to the casual observer). Database design is my favorite aspect of my job, but in my years managing software developers I have learned that most are not worldly in the ways of developing a database solution that works (and most find the PL/SQL and MS/SQL languages, well, sphinxian). I guess I decided to use my powers for good instead of evil, and started planning this site.

Just as a last footnote: I realized that "sphinxian.com" said absolutely nothing about the subject matter of this site, but since I was reluctant to let sphinxian.com go, I decided to get www.sqlsphinx.com (keep the theme going.) It was available at the time, but I got caught up in other things and someone else has taken that domain name. Last time I checked, it was a site similar to this one in that it is not commercial in nature, but offers a forum for database developers. If you are interested in SQL programming, you might want to check it out. However, since my friends send email to the sphinxian.com address, it has become readily apparent that "sphinxian" is remarkably hard to spell. To combat this problem, this site is also accessible under the domain name www.sqloracle.com.