IBM is working on improvements to its DB2 data
management platform, focusing on data warehousing and integration
as well as on autonomic, or self-managing, computing
systems.
The company aims to make the database platform a better resource
for integrating data from multiple sources, including information
stored in databases from other suppliers.
IBM researchers are also developing additional self-tuning
capabilities and working to provide better support for grid
computing, in which distributed, heterogeneous systems are linked
together to provide a virtual pool of computing resources for
running applications.
IBM officials said their data management strategy differs from
that of rivals Microsoft and Oracle in that IBM favours a federated
approach in which data is stored and accessed from multiple
locations, rather than storing all of a companies data in a single,
monolithic platform.
One project, codenamed Masala, focuses on information discovery
among massive amounts of distributed data, including data not
stored in a data warehouse, IBM officials said. For example, a
customer service agent seeking information about a caller could
have access to information such as e-mails and scanned letters.
IBM's DB2 Information Integrator product already lets businesses
access information stored in distributed locations. Masala extends
those capabilities to help businesses make better use of the
information once it can be accessed centrally.
Masala includes meta data management to track information about
the data being integrated and provides faster access to distributed
data, allowing businesses to make business decisions based on
near-real time information, said Nelson Mattos, IBM distinguished
engineer and director of information integration.
Masala could be available to customers for beta testing by the
end of the year and could show up in products in 2004, he said.
As part of IBM's autonomic computing initiative, Leo, for
Learning Optimiser, is software that learns about relationships
between data sets to improve query performance. The software, for
example, could prevent redundancies in data queries by learning
about correlations in data.
Leo is expected to appear in products in the next 12 to 18
months. It could be used in business intelligence tools for
functions such as correlating customers' buying habits.
IBM's autonomic initiative is intended to relieve database
administrators of laborious tasks that should be automated,
according to IBM.
"We're trying to get rid of the mundane, monotonous,
time-consuming stuff and freeing them for what they're really good
at," said Patricia Selinger, IBM fellow and vice-president of data
management architecture and technology.
IBM also intends its data management platform to be a player in
grid computing in the enterprise.
Paul Krill writes for Infoworld