The SQL Access Group and X/Open Co Ltd are jointly drafting a specification to expand and unify client database access across distributed environments. The two industry standard groups plan to couple X/Open’s Transport Interface, which provides a neutral communications interface for database access over TCP/IP, with SQL Access Group’s Remote Data Access protocol – which was originally part of the Open Systems Interconnection protocol standard. The bodies claim that TI-RDA would provide a uniform way for over-the-wire interactions between applications, instead of vendors supplying add-on proprietary gateways for wire protocol translation. The SQL Access Group says that a specification should be completed and generally available by the end of the year.
