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

Despite those lofty goals, there remains some concern about the Information Warehouse.

For example, Carole Morton, president of the Dylakor Division of Sterling Software, Inc., Chatsworth, Calif., suggested that there remains confusion in the marketplace about where IW will fit into IS operations.

"IBM wants to end up with the ability to centralize all heterogeneous data, including the Repository, into a warehouse where users, through tools like ours, will have access to that data no matter where it came from," Morton said.

With the unveiling of the Information Warehouse, the Repository Manager/MVS offering seems to have become just one of the many heterogeneous databases that will be accessed through the Information Warehouse, Morton said.

Therefore, she said, IBM is recognizing that its customers will probably not be able to move all data into the Repository. They will instead retain the data storage products they are using, she predicted.

New system data may be put into Repository Manager/MVS during system development, but it will be too expensive to move all the old system data into it, she contended.

Lynn White, consulting product administrator at the IBM facility in Atlanta, maintained that Repository Manager/MVS was never intended to store all of a customer's data.

"The Repository is a controlling vehicle, set up to hold metadata; that is, information about the data, not necessarily the data itself," White said. "IBM's intent is to be able to manage the data whether it is centralized or distributed."

Data quality is another area of concern, according to Glen Hughlette, president of Information Engineering Systems Corp., Alexandria, Va.

"The real challenge of enterprise-wide access to data is one that must be addressed methodologically, by making usre that the applications systems support the business of the enterprise," Hughlette said. "The key to this is to find out what the right data is, and whether it is consistent and correct."

Hughlette suggested that many older legacy systems have been supported by IS for such a long time, that the viability of the data maintained by them is questionable.

A similar concern was voiced by Ed Wood, vice president of marketing at Micro Decisionware, Boulder, Colo.

"We have confidence in DRDA's connectivity. But we are trying to understand how the end users will know the names and locations (or the metadata) about the data they need for their queries. And performance is a key qyestion," Wood said. "It looks like it will be expensive to make work. But a number of the parts look promising enough to encourage a 'wait and see' attitude."

Lawrence Catchpole, director of research at Dun & Bradstreet Software, Atlanta, asserted that the IW framework is a viable response to needs of corporate users. "Customers want help with their legacy systems, and yet the toolsets are not there to provide help for the older file systems like Vsam, sequential files and the like," he said.

D&B Software is developing software to link client/server and mainframe applications, Catchpole said. Providing a migratory path to the new technology will enable DBS customers to leverage their mainframe data and bring it into the client/server platform, Catchpole said.