The Four Hundred

IBM is poised to unleash a couple of integration, management, and analyzing software products targeted at businesses trying to more efficiently gather and interpret data as they interact with both customers and partners. Two key products that have the mandate of making Big Blue's Software Group more of a force in the database market were announced last week. The first is DB2 Information Integrator, which IBM touts as a key building block in On Demand computing, and DB2 UDB Express, which boasts autonomic computing capabilities and is aimed at the value-conscious small and midsized business (SMB) market.

Information Integrator is primarily a means with which to create a single virtual database from multiple data management platforms. It fits in nicely with Big Blue's overall concept of open systems and allowing companies to work within their current infrastructure. Expect some fireworks when this system competes head to head in the marketplace with rip-and-replace strategies such as that from database rival Oracle. IBM will emphasize the message that Integrator allows the user to access structured and unstructured data from wherever it resides while having a single view across all appropriate data sources. That point will likely win IBM a lot of favor, not only in shops where Oracle wants account control but also where Microsoftis in many ways limited to emphasizing SQL Server.

Information Integrator operates as if it were a replication server with support for one-to-many and many-to-one topologies. It will handle transaction-based or table-based data movement. Out of the gate, it will support Oracle9i, SQL Server, Sybase, Informix, and Teradata databases, as well as DB2.

At first glance, it might seem logical to limit the potential of data accessibility to relational data sources. However, Information Integrator can also access flat files, XML, Microsoft spreadsheets, ODBC, e-mail systems, the Web, and other options as well. The data collected can be distributed across Microsoft Windows, Linux for Intel, as well as the three key Unixes: Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun Microsystems' Solaris. Data can also be distributed to IBM's zOS mainframe operating environments.

IBM officials say Information Integrator 8.1 (a release number chosen to correspond with the latest release of DB2) will be available June 13 for software delivery, and media and documentation follows on July 11. It is priced at $20,000 per processor and $15,000 per data source connector.

The Express version of DB2 UDB, with its sights set on the SMB market, is being introduced to the Windows and Linux platforms as an affordable and easy-to-use database that supports integrated development environments, can be easily integrated itself, and requires little administrative staff. It is optimized, IBM sources say, for one- and two-way servers and 32-bit operating systems.

The ease-of-use issue will be a tough nut to crack when DB2 Express gets the side-by-side comparison with SQL Server, but IBM has added its much ballyhooed autonomic computing features that it expects will capture the attention of companies dependent on lightly staffed or moderately skilled IT departments that favor low-intervention and low-maintenance products. The primary benefits promised are reduced staff involvement in the setup and running of the database, self-tuning for optimizing performance, and self-healing properties that alert and advise administrators of potential problems and solutions. IBM marketing mavens came up with the term SMART (self-managing and resource tuning) technology to describe this accomplishment.

DB2 Express also adds features such as Remote DBA and Remote Installation, which are technologies developed by Informix, an IBM acquisition in 2002.

As with the Information Integrator, IBM is pitching customers on the practicality of protecting existing investments in application development skills and thereby cutting the overall cost of application deployment. DB2 Express supports a full range of APIs and application interfaces including JDBC, SQLJ, ODBC, OLE DB, ADO, ADO.NET, DB2 CLI, Embedded SQL, XML and Web Services and component-based architectures using such technologies as Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), JavaBeans, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) and XML. IBM also provides add-ins for IDEs such as WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002, Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, and Microsoft Visual InterDev.

Pricing for DB2 Express has not been announced, but IBM has promised it would be less than $1,000. The software becomes available May 30, and the media and documentation is set for release June 27.