Ardent Software Inc, the data warehousing development tools vendor, yesterday became the latest software company to hitch a ride on the Linux bandwagon, announcing the availability of its O2 Object Database Management System (ODBMS) for the free operating system. The Westboro, Massachusetts-based Ardent said making its software available on Linux would meet the market demand for a flexible, scalable, object-oriented development environment for the estimated eight million Linux users. Ardent is just the latest in a long line of industry heavyweights, including Oracle Corp, Sybase Inc, Corel Corp and Intel Corp, to back the operating system. The announcement will be particularly significant for web-oriented Linux developers, the company said, since O2 provides a layer for rapid integration of corporate data into web applications. By acting as an intelligent access layer between the HTTP server and corporate data sources, O2 helps build and execute queries and dynamically generate content based on query results. Ardent said it is offering round-the-clock web and phone-based service and support for users. The O2 database is available initially for Red Hat’s Linux, version 4.2. Support for Red Hat version 5.1 will be available during the first quarter of 1999, the company said.
