Remember Ingres? Once the name tripped off the tongue as the fourth member of the Big Four relational database suppliers, after Oracle Corp, Informix Software Inc and Sybase Inc. Now, under the custodianship of Computer Associates International Inc, the Ingres database – now OpenIngres – is more often than not missed out of the list of supported databases when software houses promote their latest products. OpenIngres 2.0 has now reached beta testing stage, and should be ready for general availability later this year. The enhancements, many of which have been known about since last year (CI No 2,993), include improved scalability for symmetrical multiprocessing, 64-bit support for very large database and very large memory configurations, variable page sizes, row level locking, asynchronous input-output support, fast load capabilities, parallel backup and restore, and high-availability and clustering features extended from DEC VMS systems to Unix environments. A new version of the ICE Internet Commerce Enabled extensions to Release 2.0 adds native application programming interface support to Netscape Communications Corp and Microsoft Corp Web servers through the NSAPI and ISAPI interfaces, can generate HTML forms directly from SQL queries, and adds JDBC Java database connectivity support. Data stream compression, and additional support for access to mainframe systems are also supported. OpenIngres Desktop 1.2, a subset of OpenIngres with all the capabilities or regular Ingres has additional development tools, faster database engine and desktop replication for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and NT. Server-based replication has also been added. Other enhancements include management tools, closer integration with Computer Associates’ Unicenter systems management products, and further support for spatial objects. For a pure object database, customers must await the forthcoming Jasmine product. Beyond Release 2 of OpenIngres, there are plans for further parallel processing enhancements, improved self-managament, and a closer integration with Windows NT, including support for clustering as it emerges.
