upport is growing for Microsoft's newest data-access
interface, OLE DB. The API, introduced 10 months ago, is intended to let applications dynamically pull software components from a wide variety of sources, including Microsoft's SQL Server database. The idea is finally catching on.
International Software Group Ltd. in Burlington, Mass., last week announced an upgrade to its OLE DB middleware, ISG Navigator 1.1, with better performance and improved access to nonrelational databases. Last month, Computer Associates and Tandem Computers licensed ISG Navigator to be included in future releases of their databases, joining Digital Equipment, which al- ready offers ISG Navigator with OpenVMS. "We're at the beginning of the adop-
tion curve," says ISG president Steven Fisch.
He may be right. IBM has outlined plans to support the API on its AS/400 computers, and according to one source, is in discussions with an independent software vendor to license an OLE DB layer for VSAM systems. Microsoft developers are adding the interface to Microsoft's SNA Server, prov
iding another route to IBM systems. Other software vendors are working on similar products.
Microsoft is positioning OLE DB, and a related layer called ActiveX Data Objects, as the successors to ODBC, its widely supported database interface. ODBC middleware provider Intersolv Inc. is expected to begin testing its own line of OLE DB products in a few weeks.
An upgrade, OLE DB 1.5, will enter testing this week. Betsy Burton, an analyst with Gartner Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn., IT advisory firm, says there's "no doubt" that OLE DB will be popular in Windows NT environments, but expects a performance penalty elsewhere. "Outside of the Microsoft domain, performance and functionality will become less."
Moore Products Co., a Spring House, Pa., manufacturer, is using ISG Navigator for ODBC connectivity. Implementation of OLE DB is at least six months away, says Jeffrey Richards, Moore's IS manager. "But we expect to move in that direction."
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upport is growing for Microsoft's newest data-access
interface, OLE DB. The API, introduced 10 months ago, is intended to let applications dynamically pull software components from a wide variety of sources, including Microsoft's SQL Server database. The idea is finally catching on.
