Object-oriented data bases are the new fashion – or fad – in the restless software industry, but one company embracing the new technology has decided to let its name say it all, and let object-orientation be taken as read. Instead, Objectivity Inc puts all its marketing stress on the fact that its product is an engineering data base. Intrigued, Katy Ring took the path to the company’s door in Menlo Park so recently trodden by DEC to find out more about the company, its products and its plans for an object-oriented future.
Objectivity Inc of Menlo Park, California is one object-oriented database start-up company whose future looks assured. When vice-president Drew Wade tells you that Objectivity is a market-focussed company, he means it. It has a product called Objectivity/DB which recently shot to prominence because of the marketing and development agreement that Objectivity struck with DEC (CI No 1,476). Not bad for a new company, with a product that is a mere six months old.
Engineering DBMS
However, object-oriented is not a phrase you will hear too often around Wade and few of the company’s press releases emphasise its use of what is seen as a new and increasingly fashionable software technique. Instead the focus is on the engineering world – Objectivity/DB is flagged as a database management system for engineering. In fact, Wade admits that there is little to distinguish his company’s product from offerings by Versant Technology or Ontologic – except that Objectivity is gunning for a specific market and not campaigning for a new technology. This is a key point – most object database companies are evangelists where the technology is concerned, and probably spend too little time concentrating on marketing their products and too much time explaining how they work. So Objectivity/DB is an engineering database management system. For, as Wade will tell you, the marketing opportunities in this area are ripe for exploitation, since the big relational vendors have failed to make an impression here. The engineering fraternity simply does not use off-the-shelf database management systems, rather it tends to have a suite of applications with a flat-file format. This is where Objectivity believes it can slot in its product as an extension to the operating system sitting between it and computer-aided design and software engineering tools. Ultimately, Objectivity/DB will enable tools from multiple vendors and those developed in-house to work together. In the long term, Wade expects the product to stretch from the personal computer up to the mainframe, but at present it runs on Sun 3 and Sun 4 workstations and DECstations. Despite these ambitions, Wade will talk of stretching the product’s scope only within the engineering sector. The picture he paints is one of a cosy co-existence with the relational vendors, where Objectivity sticks to a clearly defined database market which is, as yet, unpenetrated by Oracle, Ingres, DEC and IBM. As he puts it, Objectivity does not go to the manufacturing department of a company and ask it to replace Oracle with Objectivity/DB because the data processing manager would simply laugh at the suggestion – rather the engineering department using Objectivity/DB will access the manufacturing department’s Oracle system via SQL architected gateways. To date Objectivity has pulled off some impressive deals in its chosen market: Valid Logic Systems and Sony Corp’s internal semiconductor computer-aided design group were the first users of Obectivity/DB, offering themselves as beta test sites. So, how come Objectivity has managed to build up such credibility so quickly? A large part of the answer lies with company presi dent Bob Field, who was one of the founders of Ungermann-Bass and, latterly, a venture capitalist. His contacts and the strength of the business plan he drew up meant that the company had little difficulty attracting venture capital or winning strategic alliances within the industry. The company, as is to be expected, is committed to standards – Drew Wade is chairman of the storage manage
ment working group at the CAD Framework Initiative and is an active member of the Open Software Foundation, Object Management Group, X/Open and the enigmatic ANSI group. This group is made up of representatives from companies such as Ontologic, Hewlett-Packard, Ingres and Oracle and is working extremely quietly on developing standards for object-oriented techniques.
Targeting end-users
It is characteristic that Objectivity hitched its wagon to the Open Software Foundation rather than backing the far more credible Unix International – in Wade’s words the company joined the Foundation because of the momentum of the companies involved, IBM, DEC… Indeed this attitude matches the company’s strategy to distance itself from the object-oriented technology which its product encapsulates and pounce on the the engineering market which has no obvious vested vendor interests. Of course there are large markets begging for object databases in the finance and manufacturing sectors, but Objectivity has obviously decided that such markets are, frankly, out of its league. Consequently, it is working with companies like DEC to let them put object-oriented functionality into their database products. It is a safe bet that Objectivity is also talking and working with other relational vendors under its Product Development Partnership programme – Wade would not comment, saying only that he could say nothing of significance. For now the company is targeting its direct sales effort at end-user companies that develop or integrate engineering applications. And the company’s sharply focussed marketing operation is expecting to make landfall here in Europe, and over the Pacific in Japan, next year.
