Thought Inc, a five person, three-year-old class library vendor turned Java adherent is offering a family of tools based upon the Java Database Connectivity specification (JDBC) it says can be used to create and maintain dynamic maps of Java objects to relational database tables that can be used across the internet. The San Francisco, California-based company claims its new libraries, known collectively as CocoBase, create an internal catalog which can be modified without recompiling the application, allowing Java objects to point to new relational fields that might be stored in a completely different table. It claims a single map can span multiple database tables, not just for lookups, but also for updates, inserts and deletes. CocoBase includes CocoPowder, which allows multiple Java objects to share the same map, and object retrieval; and CocoButter, a Java-based GUI tool for building and maintaining SQL, administering the mapping and access to the catalog. CocoBase costs $4,000. Two add-on products at $1,500 apiece are CocoNibs, providing remote access to CocoPowder using JavaSoft’s Java remote method invocation interfaces; and CocoBeans, for remote access to CocoPowder using Corba. CocoBase can be integrated with Thought’s non-GUI Java class libraries such as Nutmeg and VanillaSearch, for which it claims an installed base of 25,000 users. Thought’s seeking a bundling deal with JavaSoft and claims to have two GUI vendors in its pocket. They’ll bundle CocoBase libraries with their products allowing users to seamlessly add Java-based tickers, newsfeeds and the like without having to understand the Thought that’s gone into it.
