DBMS2 at IBM
I had a chat a couple of weeks ago with Bob Picciano, who runs servers (i.e., DBMS) for IBM. I came away feeling that, while they don’t use that name, they’re well down the DBMS2 path. By no means is this SAP’s level of commitment; after all, they have to cater to traditional technology strategies as well. But they definitely seem to be getting there.
Why do I say that? Well, in no particular order:
- They have a huge commitment to a data integration business, with an increasing XML focus.
- Their favorite buzzword these days is “information-intensive,” which seems to amount to semi-composite apps that may talk in part to unstructured/semi-structured data.
- They’re serious about their XML data server.
- Unprompted – well, OK, he’s clearly read my stuff, but other than that it was unprompted – Bob referred to one of the key benefits (real and perceived) of XML storage as being “schema flexibility.”
- By accident or design, IBM has a multi-server, horses-for-courses DBMS strategy: DB2 in two important flavors, XML server, Multivalue/Pick (that’s growing, by the way), and so on.
The big piece of a DBMS2 strategy that IBM seems to be lacking is a data-oriented services repository. IBM has had disasters in the past with over-grand repository plans, so they’re treading cautiously this time around. There also might be an organizational issue; DBMS and integration technology sit in separate divisions, and I doubt it’s yet appreciated throughout IBM how central data is to an SOA strategy.
But that not-so-minor detail aside, IBM definitely seems to be developing a DBMS2-like technology vision.
| Categories: EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, IBM and DB2, OLTP, Structured documents | Leave a Comment |
SAP’s version of DBMS2
I just spent a couple of days at SAP’s analyst meeting, and realized something I’d somewhat forgotten – much of the DBMS2 concept was inspired by SAP’s technical strategy. That’s not to say that SAP’s techies necessarily agree with me on every last point. But I do think it is interesting to review SAP’s version of DBMS2, to the extent I understand it.
1. SAP’s Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) is meant to be, among other things, an abstraction layer over relational DBMS. The mantra is that they’re moving to a “message-based architecture” as opposed to a “database architecture.” These messages are in the context of a standards-based SOA, with a strong commitment to remaining open and standards-based, at least on the data and messaging levels. (The main limitation on openness that I’ve detected is that they don’t think much of standards such as BPEL in the business process definition area, which aren’t powerful enough for them.)
2. One big benefit they see to this strategy is that it reduces the need to have grand integrated databases. If one application manages data for an entity that is also important to another application, the two applications can exchange messages about the entity. Anyhow, many of their comments make it clear that, between partner company databases (a bit of a future) and legacy app databases (a very big factor in the present day), SAP is constantly aware of situations in which a single integrated database in infeasible.
3. SAP is still deeply suspicious of redundant transactional data. They feel that with redundant data you can’t have a really clean model – unless, of course, you code up really rigorous synchronization. However, if for some reason synchronization is preferred – e.g., for performance reasons — it can be hidden from users and most developers.
4. One area where SAP definitely favors redundancy and synchronization is data warehousing. Indeed, they have an ever more elaborate staging system to move data from operational to analytic systems.
5. In general, they are far from being relational purists. For example, Shai Agassi referred to doing things that you can’t do in a pure relational approach. And Peter Zencke reminded me that this attitude is nothing new. SAP has long had complex business objects, and even done some of its own memory management to make them performant, when they were structured in a manner that RDBMS weren’t well suited for. (I presume he was referring largely to BAPI.)
6. That said, they’re of course using relational data stores today for most things. One exception is text/content, which they prefer to store in their own text indexing/management system TREX. Another example is their historical support for MOLAP, although they seem to be edging as far away from that as they can without offending the MOLAP-loving part of their customer base.
Incidentally, the whole TREX strategy is subject to considerable doubt too. It’s not a state-of-the-art product, and they currently don’t plan to make it into one. In particular, they have a prejudice against semi-automated ontology creation, and that has clearly become a requirement for top-tier text technologies.
7. One thing that Peter said which confused me a bit is when we were talking about nonrelational data retrieval. The example he used was retrieving information on all of a specific sales reps’ customers, or perhaps on several sales reps’ customers. I got the feeling he was talking about the ability to text search on multiple columns and/or multiple tables/objects/whatever at once, but I can’t honestly claim that I connected all the dots.
And of course, the memory-centric ROLAP tool BI Accelerator — technology that’s based on TREX — is just another example of how SAP is willing to go beyond passively connecting to a single RDBMS. And while their sponsorship of MaxDB isn’t really an example of that, it is another example of how SAP’s strategy is not one to gladden the hearts of the top-tier DBMS vendors.
| Categories: EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Memory-centric data management, MOLAP, OLTP, SAP AG, Theory and architecture | 9 Comments |
EII marketing soup
In the comments to another thread, the subject of EII (Enterprise Information Integration) came up. It’s a tricky one, for several reasons.
First, it’s a marketing construction — a blend between between ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and EAI (Enterprise Application Integration). It’s a legitimate category; all those things are getting smushed together as near-real-time apps become more prominent. Still, it’s also an attempt to grab marketing turf.
Second, it’s commonly associated with a marketing overreach — the claim that an EII “platform” or “suite” will do everything a DBMS does (almost), but fully and heterogeneously distributed as well. Yeah, right.
Third, two of the sharpest proponents have been acquired by behemoths that tend to obscure their acquirees marketing pitches — Ascential by IBM and SeeBeyond by Sun.
Fourth, some of the best grand integrated EII suites (at least the ones that started as ETL, which is the side I’m more familiar with) aren’t complete yet. So vendors didn’t want to be too clear for fear of freezing current sales. I’m referring here mainly to Ascential and Informatica. They told analysts of their grand plans, but they haven’t been so eager to openly publicize the full details.
Fifth, the area is getting integrated with development tools for composite applications. Good examples there are SeeBeyond and Intersystems’ Cache’.
Sixth, no EII vendors’ plans fully work unless they have full relational and XML integration, and nobody really has been doing a great job on that, typically being strong in one area or the other.
Obviously, this is an area I have to research actively; EII is the neuromuscular system that holds DBMS2 together. But all the research in the world won’t change the fact that as of now it’s the weak spot in the story. There’s lots of great database management technology, and lots of excellent reasons to use a variety of kinds of that technology in your enterprise. But the tools to knit the resulting heterogeneous databases together are still sadly deficient.