Event
Summary
"PALO
ALTO, Calif., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq: INFA),
provider of one of the leading software platforms for powering e-business and
analytic applications, today announced the general availability of MX2 1.6,
the latest version of its industry-leading Metadata Exchange (MX2) application
programming interface (API). MX2 1.6 is the decision support industry's first
object-oriented metadata exchange facility to support XML, a text-based programming
language that is emerging as the "lingua franca" for integrating and managing
e-business solutions, as well as bi-directional metadata exchange. With the
shipment of MX2 1.6, Informatica has again raised the technology bar for enterprise
decision support, and delivered to customers a complete solution for metadata
access and management."
In
addition, Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN; Toronto: CSN), a leading business intelligence
vendor, has announced support for the standard. The integration between Cognos
and Informatica will give users the ability to generate and manage catalogs
that are consistent and updated intelligently throughout the enterprise. Business
Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ) and Seagate Software (Nasdaq: SEG) have also announced
support for integration between their products and Informatica PowerCenter and
PowerMart using the MX2 API.
Market
Impact
The need for consistent standardized metadata in data warehousing has been long
awaited (See TEC News Analysis article: "Is
There Finally a Metadata Exchange Standard on the Horizon?" September 28,
1999). Customers have been frustrated by the inability of different vendors'
products to share information about the data that is contained in their source
systems and data warehouses or data marts. The fact that Informatica has created
a standard XML interchange methodology that is being coded to by other major
vendors is a strong competitive advantage. XML (Extensible Markup Language),
an almost universally accepted standard, is a document format for the Web that
is more flexible than the standard HTML format. While HTML uses only predefined
tags to describe elements within the page, XML allows tags to be defined by
the developer of the page. Other tool vendors, such as Informatica's competitor
Ardent Software, have used a different approach. Ardent has employed a technology
they call "DataStage MetaBrokers". MetaBroker partners already include Brio
Technology, Business Objects, Computer Associates (for the Platinum technology/LogicWorks
Erwin modeling product), Cognos, Embarcadero Technologies, Informix, Hyperion
Solutions, and Seagate Software. Using these technologies, Ardent is attempting
to build an "Enterprise Information Infrastructure" which will provide interoperability
between products and solutions. We believe that all business intelligence vendors
will have to implement similar solutions to the metadata interchange issue soon.
User
Recommendations
Companies considering business intelligence solutions must be careful to have
the potential vendors explain how they intend to share metadata between applications
from different vendors. XML is the industry standard and would be the preferred
approach. The product under consideration should have direct metadata sharing
with the largest possible number of business and design intelligence tools.