The first offering under the Computer Associates International Inc-Fujitsu Ltd alliance, CA-OpenIngres/ODBMS, which includes Fujitsu’s nine-year-old ODB-II object database, will run on Unix and Windows NT servers and support Motif and Windows clients. An early demonstration of CA-OpenIngres/ODBMS will be unveiled next month. Current CA-OpenIngres development and the beta test of Version 2.0 of the product, scheduled for the autumn, will go ahead in parallel. The product will be a composite database system that uses both relational and object technology. ODB-II can incorporate data from various legacy sources while managing complex relationships and data, such as multimedia. Fujitsu has also developed a virtual class interface that enables classes to be defined in an external relational database. This enables ODB-II to translate queries against a virtual class into an SQL-query against any table in an external relational database – effectively merging the capabilities of two different technologies. Won’t this create some kind of hybrid system that works in two worlds without being particularly good in either? Not so says, the company. While the demand for databases capable of handling complex data types such as video or sound is rising, there is a need to graft ways of handling them onto traditional enterprise-wide systems that deal with traditional data, as well as client-server systems. CA-OpenIngres/ODBMS will do this, the company claims. The agreement has been under discussion for nine months, according to project leader Russ Artzt.
