Informix Software Inc is getting much more aggressive about its Windows NT strategy, which until now has formed only a small component of its largely Unix-based database software business. But yesterday it said it has created a version of its DataBlade Development Kit optimized for use with NT versions of its Universal Server object-relational database running on systems using Intel Corp’s MMX multimedia-enabled processors. DataBlades extend the Universal Server to support data types such as images and sound. DataBlades created with the kit will automatically take advantage of MMX processors and code running on the host system and provide improved performance over vanilla DataBlades running on MMX architectures. Informix says it’s just the first of a raft of products which it is currently optimizing for NT environments; it wouldn’t say whether it’ll do the same for its Unix products. The toolkit ships in 30 days. Informix says it’s currently doing due diligence with Intel and Hewlett-Packard Co engineers on how best it can optimize Universal Server technologies to take advantage of Intel’s forthcoming IA-64 64- bit instrcution sets processors.
