DBMS, June 1997 DBMS Online: From the Editor By Maurice Frank

Three Vendors to Watch

Visigenic, Object Design, and Rational Software are on the rise.

Recently, three companies have caught my attention: Visigenic Software Inc. (San Mateo, Calif., www.visigenic.com), Object Design Inc. (Burlington, Mass., www.odi.com), and Rational Software Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif., www.rational.com).

My View of Visigenic

Riding the coattails of other companies is one strategy to grow by leaps and bounds. It's an indirect and sometimes invisible approach, but it can deliver a huge installed base, and growing market share is critical for survival.

Visigenic began selling ODBC drivers; the company now sells JDBC drivers, too. In April 1996, Visigenic acquired PostModern Computing Technologies and its Java-based BlackWidow ORB, which Visigenic renamed VisiBroker. VisiBroker, which comes in versions for C++ and Java, supports the CORBA 2.0 specification and the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP).

By licensing VisiBroker, its ORB, to several other high-volume vendors, Visigenic appears to be gulping up huge shares of the installed base of ORBs. VisiBroker's partner list is nothing less than stunning. Netscape Communications Corp. is integrating VisiBroker into Netscape Communicator 4.0 (Netscape's newest browser) and into the Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0 (Netscape's Web server). Oracle Corp. is using VisiBroker in its Network Computing Architecture. Sybase Inc. is blending VisiBroker into its new Jaguar Component Transaction Server. Novell Inc. is adding VisiBroker into its IntranetWare server platform. Borland International Inc. will also use VisiBroker in JBuilder.

Distributed object computing will gain more ground by riding on Web technology. By slipping VisiBroker into so many high-profile Web-related products, Visigenic is poised to become the most pervasive ORB.

Object Design Under the Hood

Object Design (ODI) has also partnered with several well-known companies who are incorporating ObjectStore PSE for Java into their tools. PSE stands for Persistent Storage Engine; in other words, it's a DBMS for Java objects. Object Design licenses the standard version of ObjectStore PSE for Java to vendors. (It's also a free download from Object Design's Web site.) ODI also sells a Pro version that supports transaction commit and rollback, recovery, and the ability to connect to more than one PSE database. ODI recently extended the PSE line with an ActiveX version.

Netscape is including ObjectStore PSE for Java with its latest browser. Microsoft Corp. makes it available for download from the Gallery for Java for use with Microsoft's J++ Java development tool. Roaster Technologies is including ObjectStore PSE for Java in Roaster Release 3, a Java IDE for the Macintosh. Other development tool vendors supporting ObjectStore PSE for Java include Haht Software Inc. (HahtSite, a Web application development tool) and Asymetrix Corp. (SuperCede, a Java IDE).

Object Design is well known for its ObjectStore Object DBMS. Object Design's new strategy will place its technology into the hands of many more developers and end users. ODI may be poised to leap ahead of its rivals in the ODBMS market.

Rational Rising

Rational wants to be a key supplier of supporting products and technology for component-based developers. Last year, Rational raised its profile when it released the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The UML grew out of the collaboration of Rational's troika of object modeling gurus: Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh. More recently, Rational has formed close bonds with Microsoft. The recently released Microsoft Visual Modeler is a subset of Rational Rose, an object-modeling CASE tool. Microsoft recently adopted the UML as the standard modeling language for the new Microsoft Repository. Rational recently acquired Microsoft's Visual Test -- and then proceeded to acquire SQA Inc. and other testing software vendors. (See this month's Client/Server Connection on page 88 for more news of Rational's acquisitions.)

To succeed, Rational must quickly digest and integrate the companies and products it has acquired. By partnering with Microsoft, Rational gains visibility within Microsoft's army of developers, who otherwise might not have paid as much attention to Rational. However, to succeed as a Microsoft partner, Rational must focus on complementing rather than competing with Microsoft's growing array of development tools.

These three companies strike me as vendors to watch, but they are not the only companies worth noticing. I suspect this trio will be more prominent in the near future, and if you are not familiar with them, you should probably keep an eye on them.

Please send questions or comments to mfrank@mfi.com
Updated Friday, May 16, 1997