In a case of divide and rule, or the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, IBM has signed up a second object database vendor, this time for its RS/6000 range. Alameda, California-based Servio Corp, developer of the GemStone object database system, has signed a joint technology agreement with IBM to put Servio products on the RS/6000. This follows an agreement a few months ago (CI No 1,588) between IBM and Ontologic to market the Ontos object database on the PS/2. Apparently, a lot of Servio customers run applications on the RS/6000 such as InterACT, developer of computer-aided engineering software products, and BehavHeuristics, developer of decision support software, including revenue management systems for the airline industry. While the Ontos product could be developed to run in the AIX environment – it runs in Sun and Apollo Unix environments – it is geared around the C++ programming language, whereas GemStone supports IBM’s preferred object-oriented language SmallTalk, which eats processing power and memory for breakfast – perish the thought that that’s why IBM likes it so much! What is more Servio offers Facets, a collection of fourth generation language application tools for the Smalltalk environments.
