IBM Flexes XML Muscle

IBM Flexes XML Muscle: "

Here is another article titled "IBM Flexes XML Muscle" that covers the same general theme: IBM's appreciation of Unified Storage.

As indicated in an earlier post: IBM is clearly validating what we have done with Virtuoso (as was the case initially with their Virtual / Federated DBMS initiative ala DB2 Integrator). Here is an excerpt from today's eWeek article supporting this position:

To achieve maximum XML performance, bolstered indexing attributes in the technology will enable advanced search functions and a higher degree of filtering. IBM is also adding support for XPath and XQuery data models. This will allow users to create views that involve SQL and XQuery by sending the protocol through DB2's query optimizer for a unified query plan.

Read on..

Virtuoso has been doing this since 2000; unfortunately a lot of its value has been blurred by some of our own communications as expressed in recent blog posts [1][2] by Tom Bradford (who recently joined OpenLink Software).  

IBM's entry into the realm of Unified Storage will ultimately illuminate the reasoning behind the Universal Server vision of Virtuoso: a single server that implements a number of industry standards and speaks multiple protocols en route to delivering transparent integration across heterogeneous data, application logic, and business processes (a recent addition via BPEL support).

Ultimately, we will arrive at the realization that a single server product can implement multiple management engines for Data, Information, and Processes; in line with the distinct needs of Data, Information, and Knowledge processing. In short, I touch on this issue in an earlier post titled: The Difference Between Information and Knowledge.

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(Via Blogdigger Search: xquery.)

The post above is by Kingsley Idehen of Openlink Software, makers of Virtuoso. There's one particular quote that is significant, "unfortunately a lot of its value has been blurred by some of our own communications", that, in combination with the hiring of Tom Bradford makes Virtuoso a very interesting product to watch. To this point I've always found Virtuoso to be sort of interesting, but it was never at all clear to me what the actual focus of it was. I also never hear of anyone actually using it( well snyone other than Jon Udell that is). It's always just been a sort of interesting product that has lots of features but just can't figure out what it wants to be. I'm not a fan of products that just pile on features so they can add another bullet to the list and that's definitely been my opinion of what OpenLink was doing with Virtuoso. Hearing Kingsley say that they're recognizing the problem and knowing Tom like I do, it's a very positive sign that Virtuoso might someday move from being an interesting product to being an actually useful one.

Posted by Kimbro Staken

Sunday Jan 9, 2005 at 5:54 AM