US vendor of extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) tools for data warehousing Ardent Software, Inc has outlined the roadmap for its Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) initiative, designed to create databases in which both structured and unstructured data can be the object of complex queries.
The first step was taken in September, when the Westboro, Massachusetts-based developer augmented its flagship DataStage product with a metadata management capability, renaming it DataStage Suite to mark the occasion. That still only represents the first stage of the EII development, however, and as Neil Hutton, product manager at Ardent’s UK operation, explained, a further step will be taken in the first quarter of 2000, when the company will unveil a facility he termed rich, interactive browsing of metadata over the web.
The code-name of the entire EII initiative is the Arizona project and for the time being, the browsing facility is merely known as Tucson. Another addition to the product will be made in the second quarter, when Phoenix will be brought to market. This will add all the data handling functionality offered by DataStage Suite and Tucson for structured data to the unstructured variety.
Ardent has its own repository for metadata but Hutton said this is only as a support to its basic function, namely the sale of ETL tools. The company also supports all other major efforts to create metadata standards (those based around Oracle, Microsoft and others). The day that a single, pervasive standard exists, he said, customers will be able to throw our repository away if they feel so inclined.
Hutton said the driver behind the development of EII is customer demand in the wake of the generalized use of the web. With businesses now envisaging ‘enterprise portals’ for their entire staff around the world, bringing unstructured data into the equation – in the form of Word documents, contracts and so on – will represent a major advance for data warehousing, he argued.
The fact that, at least at the moment, there are no tools available to query unstructured data does not faze Hutton. Talks are underway with OLAP and data mining tools vendors to remedy that situation, he guaranteed, declining to reveal the identities of the companies involved.
