Informix Corp has set out a two-year roadmap for its data server products with an emphasis on data warehousing, high-end OLTP and e-commerce. It says the new products will bridge the gap between database servers and application servers and simplify the flow of data between OLTP and data warehousing applications, through support for component development standards including Java, ActiveX, CORBA and OLE DB. Next year, it says, Informix data server engines will also support what it calls a smart data federation under which data can be accessed, analyzed and manipulated across the system, regardless of location, data engine, operating system or hardware. Specifically, in mid-1999, the company plans to launch a new data engine called Centaur including application server functionality for multi-tiered application environments. It will support both Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java and Microsoft Corp’s COM+ components. Using Centaur, Informix plans to offer a set of pre-built e-commerce applications. In the second half of the year, Informix will introduce Yellowstone, a new version of its extended parallel data engine, tightly integrating it with its existing Decision Frontier set of data warehousing tools. Again, it will offer pre-built data warehousing templates using the technology for retail, telecommunications and finance applications. The data mart engine acquired by Informix last year from Red Brick Systems Inc, now part of the Decision Frontier set, will be integrated with those tools, including the MetaCube ROLAP product, during the second half of the year. In 2000 comes a high-availability data engine code-named Independence with automated data failover and more scalability for clustered and non-clustered hardware configurations, also aimed at data warehouse customers.
