Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : OBJECT DESIGN Inc.: Bargain of the year!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Trocchi who wrote (2623)	12/14/1998 6:29:00 PM
From: hasbeen101	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3194

Bob, the only opinion I could offer at this stage is that XML standards will help ODIS ... how much I really don't know. To some extent, ODIS' technical superiority has until now paradoxically been a bit of a marketing weakness. ObjectStore works quite differently from RDBMS and even from other ODBMS. If you have a computer science degree and you know OO programming, the way it works is profoundly intuitive, but if you don't, it all seems very foreign. At least XML may tend to help. But it's hard to know how rapidly XML will emerge. I'm sure people will still be playing around with SQL queries when I am an old man.

To: Bob Trocchi who wrote (2623)	12/15/1998 4:53:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3194

A very interesting article posted on Yahoo's message board.... From Software Futures: Volume 8 Number 2 1 December, 1998 Category: Company TAKING UP THE BATON: ODI'S EXCELON ODI is often talked about as a Microsoft acquisition target. Simon Goodley sees if the launch of eXcelon makes it a more serious company in its own right Even though a significant chunk of object database vendor, Object Design Inc (ODI), is owned by IBM, rumors persist that it's a Microsoft acquisition target. No wonder. Following last month's eXcelon announcement, it would be fair to say that where Microsoft's XML (extensible mark up language) strategy stops, ODI's begins: that's at the server. So what is eXcelon - or more to the point as it's currently in beta testing and will ship in the first quarter of 1999 - what will it be? Well, according to ODI, eXcelon is an XML data server that enables companies to build enterprise web applications using XML. Using ODI's embedded ObjectStore distributed caching technology in conjunction with indexing, modeling and querying services, eXcelon delivers enterprise application data into XML. (ODI bought the eXcelon data modeling, indexing and querying capabilities at the heart of the product from XML data management company Inso which created an XML version of ObjectStore.) Currently, most other XML servers are focused on textual support. ODI says eXcelon will enable numerical data to be stripped from stock, supply chains, sales and manufacturing applications, transformed and then stored in its XML repository and transplanted into XML-enabled ERP and decision support applications. Also, along with a growing number of specialist companies and tools vendors, ODI is also hoping to use eXcelon to hitch a ride on the accelerating enterprise application integration (EAI) bandwagon. ODI says customers will also be able to retrieve product data from web sites deploying eXcelon and paste it straight into their expense application or Excel spreadsheet. Indeed Dell, which hopes to generate 50% of its business from its web site by 2001, is a current beta partner. According to ODI VP of European operations, Jim Beagle, ODI tried to talk Dell out of taking eXcelon over ObjectStore as it wasn't yet a proven technology and ODI couldn't afford to have any high profile problems with its new baby. But Dell were "so impressed" with eXcelon and so committed to XML, Beagle says, that it insisted on beta testing the product. HONCHO As if to encourage the Microsoft rumor mongers further, ODI had Microsoft XML guru Adam Bosworth present eXcelon to its user group meeting last month but adds that there's nothing Redmond-centric about the technology itself. It's just that Microsoft is very aggressive about XML's use, such as in Internet Explorer 5.0, claims ODI, and it wants to pick up where Microsoft is leaving off. While eXcelon initially ships on NT in Q199, it will also subsequently be available for Solaris. To promote eXcelon's 'openness' further, ODI claims that eXcelon is a general-purpose solution that works with all data sources, application servers and client software and it fully complies with XML and all related standards as defined by the W3C. The software includes a Studio component for getting XML documents out of databases and applications. Also, ODI says that customers can use ISVs' own XML adapters, other adapters including ODBC or WebMethods' B2B server, which ODI is to resell. However, ODI does stress that users doing the data extraction and transformation work themselves with a vendors' XML adapter, require a runtime join to be performed on each query, with knock-on performance problems. ODI says that using its Studio and Explorer resolves these issues. eXcelon uses the WIDL web-enabled version of the interface definition language (IDL) to suck data out or screen scrapes HTML into XML. Using Excelon Explorer, the resulting XML documents can be dragged and dropped into the ObjectStore database. ODI believes eXcelon is a killer application for ObjectStore and will over time become its main revenue-earner - though not the company's entire future. "eXcelon represents a new major product line for Object Design," said Larry Alston, vice president of marketing for Object Design. "XML is rapidly emerging as a universal data standard, and eXcelon is a unique product based on proven technology that provides the performance and scalability required to support enterprise XML applications." While it remains to be seen how successful eXcelon proves to be, it does represent a more mature business approach by the company. That ODI is just about the last pure object database player in town does not in itself represent a victory. As ODI itself admits: "Object databases will not make ODI successful. It's a niche market." But by leveraging its object technology and combining it with what is quickly becoming the universal format for data interchange, ODI may have unearthed a better revenue opportunity. But if that happens, Microsoft probably won't be allowed to take it over. What will the rumor mongers talk about then? ----------------- Well... the rumor mongers will likely say that Microsoft will not just sit back and watch its competitors dismantling the whole PC/Windows business! AOL+Netscape merger was enough for South Carolina to withdraw from the Anti-Trust trial, and now we've got this Sun/Oracle alliance aimed at killing Windows NT! I don't see what could prevent Microsoft to make a bold move of its own...