In an attempt to improve prospects for its nascent Metadata Interchange Specification, the Metadata Coalition, which has been having problems getting anyone to take its spec seriously, has rolled over to Redmond, saying it’ll provide freeware which will bridge metadata from repositories and tools that implement its spec for use with the Microsoft Corp repository. Only a few weeks back the Microsoft told us it didn’t think the Coalition’s specification for exchanging metadata had any serious effort behind it (CI No 3,247), but it’s quite happy that Metadata Council founder Evolutionary Technologies Inc will create the freeware which will be available for download from the web. Microsoft says the net goal of what it and the Metadata Council are trying to achieve is to allow multi-vendor application development tools – which utilize various repositories to store application information – to exchange components, rules and logic. It says there was little need to adopt the Metadata Council’s MDIS interchange specification in the repository itself as the bridge fulfills a better high-level requirement.
Microsoft plans other database, warehouse programs
Microsoft currently has 65 vendors participating in a review of its future repository design. Those vendors are also making their technologies available for Microsoft to varying degrees. Platinum Technology Inc, which will be implementing the Repository 2.0 product on non-Microsoft platforms says it’s unclear whether it’ll end up supplying 10% or 50% of its own repository design to the final specification. Meantime Microsoft says it’s about to about to embark on similar programs to enable large numbers of application development vendors to work interoperably with its SQL Server database and then with products at the data warewhouse level.
