German software vendor Software AG is readying a database written in Extensible Markup Language designed specifically for electronic commerce. The product, currently code-named Odyssey, should be ready for launch at the next CeBit computer fair next March, and for shipping in mid-1999, according to the company’s CEO Walter Konigs. It will be Software AG’s second major offering in the e-business market, the first being its Bolero builder of JavaBean components, unveiled at this year’s CeBit. Konigs argued that electronic business will not be able to run exclusively on transactional databases such as DB2 or his own company’s Adabas, nor on relational databases such as those from Oracle, because they can’t process images. Software AG’s new product will, however, be written in Extensible Markup Language (XML) for that purpose. The language was chosen, he explained, because it is strong in processing the large binary fields that graphics and sound files produce. Odyssey will be designed for web transactions and will run alongside transactional or relational databases, he explained. Software AG’s vice-president for research and development, Peter Mossack, said Odyssey will sit under an HTTP server and talk to it in that language, being able to handle data in a variety of forms, including graphics and sound, as well as texts with X-pointers (the XML equivalent of hyperlinks). Mossack revealed that, in planning the multimedia database, the company did consider SQL3, but we believe it won’t prosper. In the belief, therefore, that XML, which the World Wide Web Consortium proposed as a standard in December, will thrive, Software AG is readying Odyssey in it, and is also working to enable Bolero to handle components produced in XML in the near future.
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