IBM has announced plans to offer a database capable of managing
objects, relational data, and XML documents
The computing giant detailed plans to extend the core database
engine currently in DB2 to include support for XML, with
technologies such as new index structures that relate to XML.
While IBM has supported both objects and relational data in DB2 for
some time, the addition of XML will enhance that support.
"XML gives you a very flexible model to manage all the metadata
around objects," said Nelson Mattos, director of IBM's information
integration group.
Mattos said that the idea is to make the core DB2 look like a
relational database engine with XML capabilities from the
perspective of applications looking for relational data, while
making it look like an XML database with relational capabilities or
an object database with relational capabilities from the
perspectives of applications looking for those data types.
To that end, support for the XQuery standard means that an XML
application only needs to know XQuery to get at data residing in
DB2.
Mattos added that although this technology won't be in a
forthcoming version of DB2 that is slated for this spring, later
this year IBM will make an early version available.
Brett MacIntyre, vice president of the content and information
integration software group at IBM, said that content management,
including the combination of structured and unstructured data, is
at the core of the next wave of data management.
"For us, it's about how we can put more room between us and Oracle
and Microsoft," MacIntyre said.
IBM is taking a more distributed approach to data management,
MacIntyre said. "Not everything can fit inside the database," he
said.
Furthering its distributed approach to data management, IBM is
planning to launch a new version of its Content Manager software in
the second quarter of this year.