A year after its AD/Cycle extravaganza, IBM is planning a similar portmanteau announcement of products, statements of direction and alliances in the field of implementation and management of distributed databases, Computer Systems News believes. The paper recalls that IBM’s dream is a distributed database system in which users do not need to know where the data they are requesting is stored, nor to worry about data integrity, and suggests that the new pitch will be intended to fix in users minds the idea that the mainframe has a crucial role to play in distributed computing. The announcement will be accompanied by a new release of DB2, 2.3, that will enable PS/2 users running OS/2 Extended Edition to make unlimited read-only access to data stored in a DB2 database, and provide SQL/DS support so that users can make queries against data on VSE and VM mainframes. The following release, version 3.0, is expected to enable OS/2 users to update DB2 data. IBM is also expected to announce a data propagation manager that will enable users taking data from both DB2 and the hierarchical IMS to update both databases simultaneously rather than having to copy the updated data from one to the other. Observers tapped by the paper suggest that IBM will make a new round of investments in small firms that can contribute to the overall concept, especially in the area of managing enterprise-wide databases, and that it has held talks with Legent Corp, BMC Corp and Platinum Technology Inc to discuss its plans.
