Platinum Technology Inc is extending its development agreement with Microsoft Corp to cover a new 3.0 version of the Repository, which the two will co-develop like 2.0. Microsoft expects the Repository’s open information model to be extended further, and for business process modeling and XML to be be supported as well as increased scalability and better usability features. Platinum was one of several ISVs which, together with Microsoft, wrote the specification for Repository 2.0 and was tapped by Microsoft to port and distribute 2.0 to third party platforms, including Unix, MVS and AS/400. It has had around 90 of its engineers working at Redmond on the designs and interfaces. Platinum, which has exclusive marketing rights to the Repository on these platforms, has demonstrated the 2.0 technology running on Solaris and is supposed to be merging its own repository with the Redmond model it helped design and develop. Platinum originally said the Microsoft Repository would be integrated with its Poems Platinum Open Enterprise Management System by the end of 1997 (CI No 3,205), however the company is still trying to make up its mind which repository – Microsoft’s or its own – to ship with a new suite of Poems-based decision support tools its has previewed called Project C (see separate story), before the integrated version becomes available. Platinum said it looked as if its own repository will get the nod ahead of Microsoft Repository in the interests of getting Project C to market as soon as possible. Platinum claims 400 of Fortune 1000 companies have its repository running somewhere in their organization. Its repository work with Microsoft has supposedly won the backing of 60 ISVs which are lining up to join a license program enabling them embed what Platinum is calling the enterprise version of the jointly- developed Repository 2.0 into their own tools. Microsoft ships Repository 2.0 on September 2 bundled with the Visual Studio 6.0 programming tools suite and later in the year bundled with SQL Server 7. The Repository will be able to import data from all Visual products as well as files associated with metadata and specifications. In SQL Server it will support multiple data warehouses and shared metadata, reducing, Microsoft says, the cost of developing and operating data warehouses.
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