IBM pushes DRDA link to relational data; DRDA is key to Information Warehouse framework, but skeptics claim the architecture is proprietary - Distributed Relational Database Architecture - SAA: Data Management Update

Software Magazine, Nov 15, 1991 by Mary Alice Hanna

Fosdick added that quite a few third-party Case tools require OS/2. He contends that Os/2 is slowly becoming popular among IS, even as Windows 3.0 from Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., remains wildly successful. Sundberg of IBM also contends that IS is slowly becoming friendlier toward OS/2.

"IBM was originally slow to respond to the market's need for client/server technology," Sundberg acknowledged. "In addition, OS/2's packaging was poor. Customers had to get the full extended edition with a fully priced client, including a Query, for every workstation that was on a LAN."

Therefore, Sundberg admitted, OS/2 became a very expensive choice for customers looking for a client/server model to lower the cost of data processing.

Since the unbundling of the operating system from the DBMS, Sundberg said more independent software suppliers have been writing packages to run on OS/2.

The unveiling of the Information Warehouse is another step toward the goal of fully distributed data management, and a move toward open systems, IBM contends. IBM identified Bachman Information Systems, Inc., Burlington, Mass., and Information Builders Inc., New York City, as charter members of the IBM International Alliance for the Information Warehouse, or the socalled "inner circle."

According to IBM, the Information Warehouse comprises three parts:

* Applications and Decision Support Systems--for helping knowledge workers access and utilize data to make competitive and strategic business decisions. These tools include DataLens from Lotus Development Corp., Cambridge, Mass., which enables Lotus' 1-2-3 spreadsheet to access the IBI Enterprise Data Access/Structured Query Language (EDA/SQL) server.

* The Data Delivery element--to allow the knowledge worker to gain access to appropriate data. SQL is the IBM access methodology of choice, and DRDA is the architecture that provides access to remote relational IBM data. The IBI EDA/SQL is said to provide access to a wide variety of database types.

* The Enterprise Data element--said to be the base of the IW framework, consisting of the enterprise data and the DBMSs that contain the data. Requirements like data security, integrity, database recovery, reliability, availability and performance are all the proper domain of the full-functioned DBMS.

Bill Wise, vice president of marketing at Bachman, said, "With the Information Warehouse, customers will be moving data to the front lines of their companies. That will enables decision-making at the very top levels of the organization. Those enterprises that manage this effectively are those that will successful in the long run."

In the future, IBM intends that IW will allow access to any data in an enterprise, whether or not it is SAA-compliant.

Describing a possible technique for accomplishing that goal, Wise said, "The Bachman/Designer and Bachman/DBA tools could take existing definitions of data and build a common definition of all the data; that is, model it, and then generate queries into EDA/SQL. IBI's product, which is an application programming interface (API), can interface to 45 database types, both relational and nonrelational, as well a to non-IBM database types." At that point, various IW applications might take data and adjust it and enrich it. The bottom line is that people will have easier access to their data, Wise said.