The products Boulder, Colorado-based house XVT Inc announced at DB Expo (CI No 2,657) are a move away from the company’s traditional graphical user interface development business into the client-server database application development world. The tools and communications software build portable applications that directly access DB2, IMS, Unix and NT databases, without the need for gateways or transaction systems. For the communications part of the equation, XVT has followed UK middleware company OpenWare Ltd to Shadow Direct, an Open Database Connectivity-based technology from Houston, Texas-based MVS house Neon Systems Inc, which provides transparent access over LU 6.2 or TCP/IP to mainframe DB2 or IMS data from desktop applications (CI No 2,566). Shadow Direct resides on the server and is interesting because it does not require the use of an intermediate database gateway or transaction system to get at data. Other ‘direct’ offerings, such as the Netwise Inc technology, still rely on having CICS on the host, XVT claims. Although Shadow Direct actually shows up as an Open Database Connectivity client on the desktop, and can therefore host a variety of desktop tools such as PowerBuilder (which OpenWare is doing), XVT is exploiting its own C application-building on top. DBAware Client Tools can also be connected to Unix and NT relational databases and over third party Open Database Connectivity drivers. Both technologies are part of XVT’s Development Solution For C: it’s migrating the tools to its C++ environment but says organisations are proving more leery of moving to the language than the industry had anticipated. Its own business is now split between C and C++ sales. Although Shadow Direct supports a range of databases, XVT is steering a course away from the busy Unix client-server relational world – where competitors such as Neuron Data are already some way ahead of it. It reckons DB2 could provide up to 20% of its business by this time next year. It is offering the technology in the US only for now. Privately-held XVT did some $12m last year and is heading for the mid-teens this year. It says it had hoped the infrastructure for the next technology wave, distributed object application development, would be much closer on the horizon by now than it actually is. It says it is disappointed that the Common Object Request Broker Architecture paradigm hasn’t advanced further and into products and sees Microsoft Corp likely to take a clear lead once Object Linking & Embedding/Common Object Model is distributed. It still has development systems for IBM Corp’s System Object Model in its sights. XVT says its competitors, Visix Software Inc and Neuron Data, are still emulating Motif and Windows front-ends.
