Sybase Inc says its Highgate middleware layer, said to enable high-speed data extraction from its own and third party databases (CI No 2,202), is in the hands of a number of customers in beta form, and should ship in full production form before the end of this quarter. The Highgate project was originally a straight- forward OLAP online analytical processing effort, but it has since evolved into an API application programming interface strategy for supporting SQL Server and IQ high-speed database query tools in addition to third party databases. Users will be able pluck data from relational tables using metadata information and perform OLAP calculations outside of the database itself. There’ll be Java and Windows clients and support for third party tools from Brio, Business Objects and Cognos for the additional OLAP and ROLAP activities not included. Highgate will include a virtual caching mechanism co-developed with Palo Alto, California-based WhiteLight Systems Inc which is currently in beta with its own Rapid OLAP product line. Sybase concedes that the work with WhiteLight on Highgate for the last two years is not a specific Sybase project, and that other database vendors are likely to adopt the technology too. Sybase’s OLAP will be available on NT and Solaris first, with other varieties of Unixes to follow.