Progress Software Corp was in London last week to shore up its component strategy for Progress Version 8, its new component object-oriented development environment, now due to ship for Unix in November. It was originally planned for this month (CI N o 2,907, 2,919). The strange thing is that while the firm is pushing the components concept, Progress seems to have forgotten to put its database through the same paces. The data-base provides Progress, in combination with its development environmen t, with two thirds of its revenue. It seems Progress has no intention of extending its database to incorporate object technology or complex data types. What it does plan to do is support BLOBs, Binary Large Objects. Surprised? We are, especially, si nce Oracle Corp, Informix Corp and Sybase Inc have all decided to go down the complex data type route and opted for an object-relational architecture. Even the notoriously religious software development market has agreed that Binary Large Object technology is not suitable any more. People don’t just want to access the object, they want to use it, integrate and manipulate it. Binary Large Objects just don’t have that functionality. As a riposte, Progress says its users are not asking for object support in its relational-only database and it claims some 300,000 of them worldwide. But even one of those users, Pepsico Inc, said it would have a problem in four or five years’ time with no object support in the database. In the meantime, Progress has announced Mars, its Internet enabling technology for creating transaction-based applications that run over the Internet. Currently in alpha test, Mars is a pure server-intensive product that is configured for transaction processing and busi ness logic. What is interesting about this product is that it is Javaless. Internal Java support is not an option, says Progress, because it is so client-oriented. If Java evolves and begins to deal with these types of functions then, and only then, will the firm consider it, it says. This is a brave statement considering the popularity of the technology. It remains to be seen whether Progress Software wins through, or is forced to fall into line with the rest of the Java crowd. Mars goes to b eta test at the end of the month and shipments are expected from November. – Alison Hawkings
