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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
TOP VENDOR REPS MEET AT SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT 2004
A panel consisting of representatives from Oracle, Sun, BEA, Microsoft, IBM
and eWEEK magazine discussed a range of topics specifically related to the
relationship between XML and SQL at Software Development 2004.
They agreed that customers would not abandon SQL, desired XML data
repurposing, and they believed Web Services to be the default implementation
strategy for a number of projects. Grid computing, they felt, will not be
truly adopted for another three to five years.
SQL, they decided, served as a foundation to software, data, and skills.
There
is no foreseeable reason for customers to abandon it. To think otherwise, the
group believes, would be erroneous.
But would integration continue to be done with SQL or would XML replace it?
Some of the panel argued that there would continue to be a large market for
SQL and that it would just be enhanced by XML, which allows the representation
of data in SQL impossible with SQL's elementary data types.
Dana Florescu of BEA disagreed, however, stating that BEA's data
integration
cases could not use SQL. All of the cases included at least one data source
not mappable to SQL, like older XML databases, Web Service, LDAP, or XML.
Florescu argued that XML and XQuery, for instance, were more natural for
integration use and more apt to be properly implemented. IBM's Kleewin
believed otherwise, stating that XQuery implementations are too new to allow
for research on discontinuities among them.
Agreements were more unanimous regarding Web Services, however. The
moderator,
Ken North, began the discussion with some statistics: According to IDC, the
Web Services market may reach 34 billion dollars by 2006, but the average
project would cost just 50 thousand dollars and last only 90 days. 85% of
enterprises were planning Web Services projects according to another survey
and InfoWorld stated that over half of surveyed programmers were working on
Web Services.
Though there are concerns regarding Web Services -- namely security,
transactions, and incompatible data models across enterprises -- Peter Coffee,
from eWEEK magazine, noted that they had become the main processing model for
in-house projects. Jim Kleewin agreed and also believes that Web Services are
not a niche solution.
Still, Florescu disagreed and stated that Web Services were expensive,
difficult, and not necessarily completely reliable yet. Jim Gray, from
Microsoft, countered by describing the ease of making Web Services. Gray also
agreed that Web Services are a staple for organizations, particularly those
which use outward-facing model like Kinko's, eBay, UPS, and Amazon. Despite
experimental efforts, there have been many successes.
Also discussed were Open Source and the fate of standards organizations.
Florescu believed Open Source software was very influential and important.
She provided examples by noting that almost all W3C recommendations had
implementations in Apache with good quality. For this reason, Florescu felt
that W3C recommendations had fewer interoperability problems than SQL.
Peter Coffee also felt that Open Source products were high in credibility.
Rather than simply choosing between Open Source and commercial, Coffee's
readers have been choosing products based on quality, support cost, etc over
the past year.
Jim Gray agreed that Open Source has been beneficial, but questioned the
business model and its underscoring of the software industry. To counter this,
he argued that software sellers had to improve.
Jim Melton, from Oracle, also felt that Open Source forces vendors to
develop
better products based on things other than price.
Ken North noted that the number of standards bodies has increased
dramatically
and that a sort of war has erupted in the standards world. Jim Melton agreed
and felt that standards organizations like ANSI, ISO and W3C will persevere
while others will fade away. He noted that new standards organizations have
not been successful in developing standards quickly, even though they are
often founded on the very premise of quick standards development.
Coffee believed that customers benefit from standards wars because vendors
are
arguing over function definitions, not proprietary ones. Plus, customers are
willing to pay for standards compliance and companies that verify standards
compliance have the opportunity to grow, according to Coffee.
Other topics included the evolution of Java and expert groups'
determination
of how to use it with new technologies. Security, and the expectation that
everyone in IT should be a part of the solution was also discussed. In
addition, the group spoke about the growing market for mobile devices like
PDAs and cell phones, which could ship more than PCs this year for the first
time.
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