November 02, 1998, Issue: 707
Section: Software
Remote Data Ties -- Extensible Databases Ease The Exchange Of Information
Charles Waltner
Thanks to a new breed of database, Keith Gilbert is rewiring the idea of the distributed network. Gilbert's company, Labor Ready Inc., a temporary-employment service in Tacoma, Wash., needed to collect and manage key administrative information from its 500 branch offices throughout the United States. Instead of turning to a frame relay or other WAN connection for linking the remote offices with the company's main database, Gilbert is using a product from InterBase Software Corp., a subsidiary of Inprise Corp. Gilbert, the MIS project manager, uses InterBase's administration-free database to run a standalone application at each office for tracking employee payrolls, issuing invoices, and performing other back-office tasks.
Once a day, an employee at each office dials in via modem to the InterBase database running the back-office management application at headquarters. The client application and the main database exchange information, automatically centralizing all crucial management information while distributing any new data pertinent to the operations of the branch office. The offices can also set the operation to run overnight, when loads on both the clients and the server database are low.
Many of the major business database vendors, as well as a handful of smaller players, are eagerly developing slimmed-down versions of their own core products that can store and manage data much in the way a corporate database handles the information. These databases, also referred to as mobile or embedded databases, are lightweight enough to run with the limited computing resources of a desktop or notebook computer, or even a personal digital assistant or smaller appliance (see story, p. 92).
They differ from other approaches to remote data sharing in several respects. Unlike applications such as Lotus Notes, which is based on a flat-file data-sharing architecture, this new breed of remote databases uses the basic engine that powers large relational databases. As a result, they can generate complex reports and perform more-advanced analyses. But unlike large databases, extensible database applications are simple enough to require little if any administration and only a modicum of training --at least, that's the promise.
Extensible databases also liberate end users from the leash of a LAN or WAN connection. Rather than dial in to the company's network for direct access to an enterprise database, end users with applications running embedded databases can unplug from the network and still have access to downloaded data and, more important, the application for manipulating the information.
And unlike many of the Internet-based solutions for data access, these smaller versions of corporate databases allow for the bidirectional flow of information through sophisticated replication technology. Not only can employees access information from afar, but any changes they make to the data, such as entering weekly payroll totals, are uploaded to the company's main database, helping streamline data collection and enriching the enterprise information store.
Available Products
Until recently, Sybase Inc. has been the only major database manufacturer with such a product, its Adaptive Server Anywhere mobile database (previously named SQL Server Anywhere). But over the past year, InterBase, Microsoft, and Oracle --and upstarts such as Cloudscape-- have jumped into the field. Microsoft will debut a desktop edition of its SQL Server database when it ships version 7 of the product, due before year's end.
Oracle earlier this fall released version 3.5 of its Oracle Lite product, which includes greatly improved bidirectional data-feed capabilities as well as refinements for running on PDAs. In March, Cloudscape released the first version of its own 100% Java extensible database. And InterBase plans to release a replication engine in the first quarter of 1999 that will run with enterprise databases from Microsoft, Oracle, and Sybase.
The beauty of these extensible database solutions, Labor Ready's Gilbert says, is that they provide all the advantages of sharing centralized data over a traditional WAN, without the infrastructure hassles. "Communications technology is always an iffy thing, and with a frame relay WAN connection to a corporate application you always run into downtime," Gilbert says. "To ask our branch offices to put up with such communications delays was not acceptable for us."
Industry analysts say there are several reasons the technology is taking off. The continued growth in the number of mobile and remote employees has built interest in extending business networks and their resources. The development of more-powerful desktops, notebooks, and handheld devices makes such client-based data management much more feasible. And the enterprise database has matured over the past 10 years: Companies have consolidated their data; now they want to share it with as many employees as possible.
But the failure of telecommunications technology to deliver on its promise of a wired world --one in which an individual can connect to the Internet or another network at any time or at any place-- has done the most to bring attention to these database solutions, says Marc Kannenberg, a researcher at American Management Systems' Center for Advanced Technologies. "Ideally, we'd like to be a perfectly wired society, but that isn't happening," Kannenberg says, adding that remote modem connections, wireless data communications, and other technologies have proved more challenging than first imagined.
That certainly was part of the appeal for Eric Kent, director of IS at publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. in New York. In December 1996, Kent's staff created a sales-force automation system using Sybase's SQL Anywhere.
The application lets the company's U.S. sales force create and submit sales orders, provide up-to-date marketing information to customers, access customer information, and more. All this information is stored on a mainframe IBM DB2 database at Simon & Schuster's IS operations in Old Tappan, N.J., distributed through a server, and accessed by 240 salespeople via notebooks running Windows 95.
Kent says the system has made sales reps more effective by giving them access to more-up-to-date information. The application has also saved money by streamlining data entry, since sales reps can type in orders on their own at a customer's site, and it helps Simon & Schuster forecast book demand, because sales reps can enter sales projections for their region.
"This is really critical to our profit margin," Kent says. "With accurate forecasts, we don't run short on books and have to do reprints, but we also don't have a bunch of extra books sitting in a warehouse collecting dust."
More Support
Thanks to the growing number of vendors offering support for extensible databases, other companies are finding it easier to enjoy the same benefits of this technology.
Nat Wyate, chief technology officer for Cloudscape, says Java's quick debugging process and other easy programming attributes mean companies can roll out extensible database applications much more quickly and cheaply.
Cloudscape's customers agree. "Java on the whole is an enormously easier product to develop," says Chris O'Brien, VP of SoftCom Inc., an Iselin, N.J., provider of computer-based business training programs. It took two developers two months to convert its SoftCom Learning Net application into a Java-based application running the Cloudscape database.
O'Brien says Cloudscape lets his company collect data as well as distribute electronic training multimedia. The SoftCom Learning Net uses Cloudscape bidirectional data mechanisms to collect information about which students access which multimedia materials and teaching programs stored in the Cloudscape database. Such information helps answer questions about the effectiveness of a teaching curriculum. SoftCom then uses that information to improve the structure of its programs and report to clients on the effectiveness of their training applications.
No Easy Gains
But while extensible databases promise to extend enterprise data to the farthest edges of the network and help companies overcome communication infrastructure issues, as well as save money and improve efficiencies, such gains will not come easily, analysts warn. Since the market has been mostly ignored until now, most of these products are still not completely developed.
"Is this technology mature yet? No, there's lots more work to be done," says Mike Sun, an analyst for Giga Information Group. Replication is one of the biggest sticking points, because if it's done badly, it can lead to poor data integrity or inaccurate information for end users. "Replication is tricky, no doubt about it," says Labor Ready's Gilbert, who built his own replication engine to help process an average 25,000 paychecks a day.
Simon & Schuster's Kent says Sybase's SQL Anywhere mobile database was the only product at the time that offered a client version with replication capabilities. He agrees that replication requires "a bit of expertise" on the part of administrators, but overall, he says, the process has worked reliably.
Interoperability is another issue for IS managers. The client version of one database product may not work with another manufacturer's database. And certainly the two will work best together if they are from the same manufacturer.
As a result of these challenges, applications using extensible databases require expertise to develop, IT managers say. Kent says computing departments that want to create applications using this technology need skill in database design. Also, though extensible databases offer the promise of administration-free applications, Kent says companies need remote-management capabilities to check up on the clients and download updated applications.
But for IT managers like Labor Ready's Gilbert, the benefits of extensible databases outweigh the challenges of the rapidly developing technology. That was proved earlier this year when a fire-truck ladder ripped out a section of telephone wire connected to a Labor Ready office in Seattle. The office didn't have phone service for two weeks, but its back-office data operations kept going, working with its own data set until it could update with the enterprise server. That's a trick even the best WAN couldn't pull off.
Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc. |
