By William Fellows
Object Design Inc is repositioning its ObjectStore object database for data serving, figuring the market is moving towards solutions that enable enterprise data to be re-formed for use within Java, C++ and web applications. As such it is highlighting the caching techniques in a new 6.0 release of ObjectStore which now supports Java caching and clustering and Enterprise Java Beans integration – it includes an EJB container for BEA’s WebLogic 4.0 server. ODI says 6.0 can now be deployed in the middle tier as a data server or in the more traditional role of a back end database. Although ODI has calved embedded or personal and XML versions of ObjectStore – PSE and Excelon respectively – 90% of its revenue is generated by the vanilla ObjectStore database. The other versions funnel customers towards the higher- tag product. In fact ODI says it is about to rename PSE ObjectStore Lite. ODI recently reported a first quarter net loss of $2m compared with a profit of $25,000 last time on revenue which rose 0.7% to $13.1m compared with $13m last time. It says there’s nothing fundamentally wrong – its 1998 business grew 30% over 1997 – some customer sales cycles ballooned. It expects to be able to continue to grow at around 30% a year. ObjectStore 6.0 is priced from $4,500.
