In a lavish presentation in New York (broadcast via satellite to West Coast press and analysts), Sybase Chairman, President, and CEO Mark Hoffman said that System 11 should lay to rest "any lingering questions of performance, scalability, and quality." Using a triathlon metaphor, company officials hammered on this point, and had three of its biggest customers give testimonials on how System 11 performs well, scales well, and provides accurate results. The System 11 strategy provides a single architecture from which customers can choose a total solution or individual products.
Sybase Senior Vice President of the Enterprise Products Division Dennis McEvoy outlined SQL Server 11 (due out in December 1995), which features a Logical Memory Manager optimized for mixed-workload environments. This Logical Memory Manager provides named caches, variable block sizes and buffer algorithms for faster I/O, a cache-sensitive optimizer, and a cache analysis tool. SQL Server 11 will also feature dynamic load balancing, and it is ISO 9000-certified for quality. (Dennis McEvoy provided a detailed preview of Sybase System 11 in DBMS 's October issue, page 38.)
In the data warehousing space, Sybase IQ (due out in the first quarter of 1996) is an extension of SQL Server that will feature bitmap indexing technology (acquired from Expressway in early 1995). Sybase MPP (available now) is an optional add-on to SQL Server that is optimized for parallel computing. According to McEvoy, Sybase MPP scales linearly to 128 processors and is in use now for production databases with 450GBs of data and 300 users.
Sybase SQL Anywhere (due out in December 1995) is positioned for mass deployment, from mobile computers to the desktop to the LAN. It offers low cost with a small footprint, and Sybase Transact-SQL compatibility for better integration with SQL Server. Plus, SQL Anywhere provides two-way replication to/from remote and mobile sites via SQL Remote.
Powersoft CEO and Sybase Executive Vice President Mitchell Kertzman provided a rather vague view of future Sybase plans, saying only that Sybase will continue to support new technologies, including the Internet and electronic commerce, multitier applications, and network-centric computing. While Kertzman said that "System 11 provides a great foundation for the next generation of computing," he did not give any specifics or name future products. Sybase Inc., 510-922-3500.
The applications were designed for SunShares, whose mission is to "help people use the earth's resources in a more sustainable, efficient, and healthful manner." SunShares provides opportunities for communities and neighborhoods to recycle, reduce waste, conserve energy and water, and use more renewable resources. For more information on SunShares or the Developers Competition, contact Droege Computing Services Inc., 919-383-9749.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, Intersolv acquires TechGnosis for approximately 3.4 million shares of Intersolv common stock and $7.5 million in cash. The transaction is valued at close to $80 million. Intersolv, 301-838-5000.
1995 Developers Competition Winners
In early October, 50 teams of independent and vendor-sponsored developers traveled to Durham, N.C. for the 1995 Developers Competition, produced by Droege Computing Services Inc. and Advisor Publications. Each team had to produce a fully functional application in one day, based on a predefined specification and late-breaking modifications. The first five overall winners were as follows (special congratulations to Magic Software Enterprises [Irvine, Calif.] for sweeping the first five places):
Bronze, silver, and gold medals were also awarded in special categories. Client/server gold medals went to developers using Oracle Developer/2000; GUI gold medals went to developers using Magic, CTree, Oracle, and Btrieve; OOP gold medals went to developers using Gupta SQLWindows; and RAD gold medals went to developers using Magic.
Intersolv Comes Down with TechGnosis
Intersolv (Rockville, Md.) announced in October that it acquired TechGnosis International Inc. (Brussels, Belgium), a provider of cross-platform data access technology. According to company officials, the TechGnosis product line will strengthen Intersolv's presence in Asia/Pacific territories, as well as strengthen the company's "virtual data warehousing solution" by combining the DataDirect series of products with TechGnosis' SequeLink. SequeLink will bolster Intersolv's back-end data access tools because it provides a single connection to relational and legacy data sources from any client on any network or platform. After the merger, Intersolv's Virtual Data Warehouse will consist of DataDirect Explorer, DataDirect SmartData, DataDirect ODBC, and now DataDirect SequeLink.
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