ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/...ers/202452.pdf

My comments include
1) GREAT! Thanks, IBM and IDC.
2) "Flat" is a term that can be inflammatory in relational circles, but
heigh ho, I tend to (sometimes inadvertantly) inflame whenever I write
anything on this topic too
3) Embedded -- maybe a good marketing strategy, but not highly accurate
given that ERP solutions use such DBMS's.

Cheers! --dawn

Dawn remember that embedded does not necessarily mean small. Simply integral
to the application.

I'm pretty sure with our current MSSQL/Oracle/Informix application that we
let our customers buy the database from wherever they want.- or install it
into what they currently have (within specified minimum requirements).
However, when we sold our UniData/D3 application we sold the database as
part of it - at one point even the hardware it ran on.

It's probably a popular misconception that embedded databases are smaller -
likely because they are much less of a hassle.

hth
Colin Alfke

"dawn" wrote
<snip>

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Dawn, yer amazing, I was just discussing this (formerly) well hidden
article with someone today. Here is one quote that caught our
attention:
"IBM’s commitment to these products has been demonstrated in its
ongoing investment in their development and its ongoing effort to
support U2 partners and customers. IBM’s greatest shortcoming in this
regard could be said to be its lack of promotion of these products,
leaving them as perhaps the best-kept secret of the DBMS world. IBM is
moving to address this issue, however, by bringing the U2 products to
light as important elements of its information management product
family and strategy."

The article was written over a year ago. My position has not changed
and is in agreement with this paper, that IBM is doing a great job
with U2 technically, but that they are not doing well for their
reseller channel. IBM continues to exclude the U2 resellers from
marketing opportunities and business programs which are available to
their other partners. IBM U2 resellers who are happy in their little
coccoons have no idea about all of the channel opportunities afforded
to their DB2 cousins. I'll be happy if someone can prove me wrong -
just send U2 resellers a list of IBM initiatives for DB2 resellers,
and ask them if they were aware of them and if they took advantage of
these generous offerings. A well worded survey that asked some good
questions in this area might tell us something about (a) whether or
not IBM is really trying, and (b) if the problem is actually getting
the U2 people to take a bite of the apple that might be dangling in
front of them.

T

Tony Gravagno wrote:
Tony - i think, certainly in the uk, it is a bit of both. Every time i
speak to my IBM rep, they enthuse about the initiatives they are taking
with their business partners and how the u2 solution catalogue is
actively being used in IBM portal solutions. I think also the problem
is that IBM get involved in large scale portal solutions for say ERP,
etc whereas most u2 var solutions (certainly in the uk) are more niche
market places that IBM would not normally be associated with as a
portal provider or systems integrator.

Dawn - one prob with the article is the "Sponsored by IBM" at the top,
i have shown it to some people and they say, "well it will say that
wont it ....".


Rgds
Symeon.

Colin Alfke wrote:
Yes, I didn't mean to imply anything regarding the size, only whether
it was "embedded" within an application or a more broadly useful and
used part of the enterprise. "Embedded" means it is surrounded by, not
useful apart from, the applications. You can surely write query
statements directly against the DBMS, however. Competitors of a
UniData ERP solution might run on Oracle, for example, and neither
end-users nor developers would look at say that the distinction was
that the DBMS was "embedded" in the one and not the other.

I licensed an ERP from one company and UniData from the Unidata company
(way back when). To the extent that there were resellers of UniData at
that time (I wasn't aware of it, but perhaps in other countries), it
could have been licensed from others.

That is a marketing decision, just as "embedded" has become a marketing
term, rather than a description of how the DBMS must be used.

I never even thought of the size of the dbms in this. Why would people
think that "embedded" implied smaller? It might imply more specialized
since it sounds like you only get one application and you wrap a DBMS
inside of it. What I would argue against is this notion that what are
currently termed "embedded" DBMS's are really less broad and isolated
within a single application. Cheers! --dawn
<snip>

<snip>
Symeon -- You could point out that IBM bought the assets of Informix
more than 6 years ago and it is only since Janet Perna left last year
(her baby was DB2) that IBM is not only recognizing the worth of U2,
but is letting information flow more broadly within the company
regarding this product, as best I can tell.

So, if this white paper were only an internal document within IBM, it
is still a big step getting this software giant to have a visibile
positioning of U2 in this way. When combined with IBM Viper, IBM is
proclaiming in a pretty big way that they understand that traditional
relational dbms products are not the only story they have.

Soon we will hear people referring to their SQL-92-centric DBMS
solutions as "legacy."

smiles. --dawn

"dawn" wrote:
Many "mainstream" business apps use the MVC notion of separation of
UI, rules, and data. Because relational databases are so similar, the
end-user is given the option of whichever one they want to use. The
business rules don't care about which database is used because they
operate through a Data Abstraction Layer (DAL, also called Data Access
Layer). The vendor or third-parties can create a DAL for selected
databases and the end-user chooses their favorite based on
performance, familiarity, whatever.

Apps that do not make use of this use the marketing term "embedded" to
avoid the term "limited": "This is an embedded solution" vs "You are
limited to the one and only database option we provide" or "We hide
the database from you, don't worry about it, focus on the app".

I think the implied notion of small size comes from the PDA and
intelligent device market, which over the years has used the term
"embedded" to imply a Windows, Linux, Symbion, Palm, or other OS was
loaded via firmware. Companies are based on the notion of Embedded
Linux, and many open source projects focus on the idea of embedding
web servers and other utility software into appliances.


Perception is everything. The MV market might do well to adopt the
notion of an embedded database to get the focus away from the DBMS and
more on the business app. Most people agree that in the end a VAR
sells apps and not databases, and yet we identify ourselves primarily
by the database we use, and many sales people proudly lead with the
claim that their product is built on MV technology. I hate to hide
the 'P' word as much as anyone but that's just not the way to win
friends or influence people. These days it might almost be better
marketing to tell someone the embedded database is "proprietary" than
to tell them it's Pick/Prime-based.

Follow-up to the notes about the DAL... Some MV developers write
their code to be "platform independent" which means it may run on more
than one MV platform. Just for marketing purposes I think it's worth
considering a port to jBASE or ONWare so that they can run their MV
BASIC code against SQL Server or Oracle on the back-end. And the new
Cache MV should figure in there somewhere too considering their
awesome marketing presence. You can lead with your embedded DBMS of
choice (which known only to you is MV) but I think the DAL concept and
option to use a more mainstream database will open a lot of doors and
get this silly DBMS issue out of the sales cycle so that you can focus
on more important things.

T

Tony Gravagno wrote:
Minor correction tossed in is that I did not write what follows,
instead
Colin wrote:
This is me:
Yes, several vendors suggest their product works in a
database-indepedent way. Sometimes the list of DBMS's includes a
MultiValue database (as in the case of the ERP solution I used) and
sometimes only RDBMS (SQL-DBMS) products.

It is not easy to make a product work across DBMS tools and more
difficult if it supports both MV and SQL DBMS's, but not impossible.

Given that U2 is being positioned as "embedded" then I think you are
suggesting that they are excluding products that are cross-DBMS, wtih
UniData as one option, for example. However, in that same document,
they use my former employer (Datatel) as an example. They surely know
that it can be run on SQL Server (with UniData as middleware) or on
UniData. But they still term the UniData product as if it were an
embedded DBMS and SQL Server not. So, there must be some other
distinction that is eluding me at this point, else it is strictly
marketing spin.

Hmm. That's another angle. What are they then saying is "embedded" in
what?

Yes. Sometimes that only means "it is delivered with" but I think it
supposed to mean that it is surrounded by. So, if you embed an http
server in your application or app suite, then you have an embedded web
server. If you can use that http server on its own, without the
applications it comes with, then it doesn't seem to be embedded.

I agree that might be "good spin," but I still don't think it is quite
accurate and could be quite misleading. I could imagine someone saying
"we don't want to use UniVerse because it is only an embedded database
and we need a general purpose dbms." However, taking one term, such as
"embedded," and using it to distinguish from SQL-DBMS's does help give
some breathing room without being hindered by other philosophies of how
to write data-based software (e.g. legacy relational theory).

I was actually really, really surprised (and pleased) to see IBM making
it clear that their products come from Pick.

As I mentioned, I work with people who use UniData and do that.

You are right that the issue comes up because end-customers still care
about what DBMS they are using. Why? Because they want access to
their data and to potentially expanding the software without being
completely dependent on their vendor. If the product is
shrink-wrapped, that is not important, but for enterprise solutions the
dbms is still important to sites for good reason. That could change,
but I don't see it changing soon. If I were researching a major app
for my company, I would still care what DBMS it uses today.

Cheers! --dawn

Glen B wrote:
I thought it also implied that you cannot use the embedded entity in
standard procedures, such as queries, without going through the wrapper
(application/s) in which it is embedded. I definitely could be
mistaken.

I should add "as an standard user" perhaps?

Agreed. I am talking about the normal use of the embedded thing would
be through the wrapper to that thing. That then sounds restrictive for
a DBMS, perhaps indicating that you cannot query the data "directly"
but must go through the wrapper to do that. So, an embedded database
does not sound like a generally useful database for most broad
use/enterprise purposes. Make sense? --dawn

<snip>

On 13 Sep 2006 16:31:33 -0700, "dawn" <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Oh dear! Oh dear!

Folks - As far as I can determine, there is not, nor has there ever
been an officially sanctioned IT meaning for the word "embedded", from
Codd, God, Rick, Dick or Tony ... or anybody else.

There is a dictionary definition, of course, but in the use IBM made
of it.....????

You can all have your own interpretations if you like..

But, please, no 4-week sojourn through the travails of what each of us
thinks it does, might, or should mean. Please? There is just not
that much divergence of opinion.....


Bruce Nichol
Talon Computer Services
ALBURY NSW Australia

http://www.taloncs.com.au

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is....