Last week’s announcements included the usual rag-bag of loosely-connected or unconnected items, and IBM Corp also announced its DB2 entry into the low-end database query market with Visualizer Query for Windows, which it launched because those customers that saw the AIX and OS/2 versions were more interested in running the thing under Windows. IBM positions it against such tools as Intelligent Query, Business Objects and Access, but it really seems to be more comparable to Forest and Trees. The price, which has not yet been finalised, should be around $200. IBM hopes that users of the tool – such as the UK’s Inland Revenue, currently an Informix Corp customer, will be drawn into the DB2 world as a result of using it.
