Sybase breaks from the pack - ImpactNow: Adaptive Component Architecture Web-based distributed object strategy - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article

Software Magazine, June, 1997 by Deborah Radcliff

Sybase Inc., Emeryville, Calif., which is traveling in the wake of Oracle's Network Computing Architecture and recovering from two years of weakened market share, is now rolling out a new Web-based, distributed object strategy through a product line called ImpactNow: Adaptive Component Architecture.

The suite uses standard-language component logic for multitier deployment and application building tools. It also offers a reorganized SQL 11.5, now called the Adaptive Server, which integrates different data stores for specific functions such as online transactional processing and decision support.

With its Adaptive architecture, Sybase is moving in a different direction than Informix and Oracle, which both introduced Universal Server object relational databases earlier this year. According to Evan Bauer, vice president of data management research at Giga Information Group, Cambridge, Mass., Sybase's focus on component development and middleware links to other data sources targets relational data marts and other applications with distributed data and business logic.

Bauer points out that offering diversified tools and middleware is a sound strategy for Sybase since the database market will likely slow from 40% growth per year to 15% to 20% starting in 1997 or 1998.

Currently in beta, the Adaptive Server will be extended through a new common language processor and component integration layer to reach beyond traditional SQL and embrace Java Beans, ActiveX and Corba components. "Now, developers can build components in standard languages and deploy them across all three tiers in a multitier architecture," says Gary Steele, vice president of Sybase's middleware and data warehousing products.

The Adaptive Server will house two types of data store systems within the database, accessed through a common language query processor. Sybase-developed stores will first separate and run relational, decision support and mobile processes. The second data store is based on data types using third-party vendor plug-ins akin to Oracle's cartridges and Informix's DataBlades.

The problem with this strategy, says Mark Niebur, senior product manager of server technologies at Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., is Sybase's lack of third-party vendors, their inability to store objects, and lack of integration. "We've evolved our architecture to a single data store optimized for different types of data and have leapfrogged them with object functionality," says Niebur.

Sybase's Terry Stepien, vice president of workplace databases, retorts that separating the data types and database functions into stores keeps the focus on relational data, which is what Sybase customers want.

As for third-party vendor participation, Sybase has announced partnerships with Vision for geospatial data; NIC for image storage and indexing, both in beta; Verage for image content searching; Fame for time series; and Verity for text storage and search, all scheduled for Q3 beta.