Database Management - Impact Of The Internet On Database Management Technology

IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON DATABASE MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

As stated by Uche Ogbuji in a July 2001 study of various DBMSs, "The database community is one of the oldest in the computer world, and it is almost as famous as the application programming community for the diversity of its ideas and the sharpness of the debates between its gurus. Lately events have conspired to expose these concerns to a wider audience. For instance, the seemingly inexhaustible march of the Web revolution has exposed more and more developers to database issues because of the desire for ever more dynamic Web sites." In fact, the rise of the Internet prompted the development of many new database management system features. These were designed to enable clients to take advantage of Internet-based opportunities such as e-commerce, which emerged in the late 1990s.

Database management giants like Oracle had begun tailoring their products to the Internet in the mid-1990s. For example, the firm's Web-enabled Oracle Express Server 6.0, launched in 1996, offered online data analysis functionality on both the Internet and corporate intranets. Oracle began to restructure itself around its Internet operations in 1998 when it released Oracle 8i, a version of its flagship database management product that allowed firms to manage all of their database functions on the Web. Oracle continued to develop new Internet-based technology in 2000. In May, the firm launched its E-Business Suite, as well as the Oracle 9i DBMS, which included an application server allowing users to run e-commerce applications related to their databases. The new product also offered file and document management, e-mail, Web server, and message queuing features.

By then, both Microsoft and IBM had begun to pay more attention to the DBMS market, recognizing its importance to the increasingly Web-based information technology industry. Microsoft began discussing plans to upgrade its SQL Server to support extensible markup language (XML), the language used to create Web documents, in 1997. According to an October 2000 article in InformationWeek, "XML is one of the primary areas that all the major database vendors have scrambled to embrace. Why is XML so important? XML facilitates communications between systems that normally don't speak the same language. Because of its self-describing nature, XML provides a way to pass information between dissimilar systems with some level of confidence that it will be properly interpreted on the other end. Direct XML support in the database means there is no need for any other tool to translate data from an external provider into something that can be used immediately." As a result, XML support, which included the ability to store, manage, index and search XML documents, was seen as increasingly necessary for DBMSs. Microsoft also wanted to be able to back up, restore, and reproduce XML applications. However, several delays kept the firm from offering these features until the release of SQL Server 2000 in mid-2000, well after both Oracle and IBM had added XML support to their databases.

Despite its delayed release, the new product boosted the firm's database management sales by roughly 45 percent, allowing it to gain crucial market share points. Microsoft also revealed its intent to include scale clustering—which would offer the increased processing and storage capabilities needed for e-commerce applications—in its 2001 release of SQL Server. During 2000, Microsoft increased its DBMS market share from 13.1 percent to 14.9 percent, while industry leader Oracle increased its share from 31.4 percent to 33.8 percent. Third place IBM gained less than one percent, growing its share from 29.9 percent to 30.1 percent.

IBM had upgraded its DB2 system in 1999 with features designed to facilitate e-business. Late in the year, the firm made the DB2 XML Extender, which added XML support to DB2, available for free to DB2 customers via a download. IBM shipped version 7.1 of DB2 in October of 2000. Designed to facilitate e-business operations, DB2 7.1 included a Net Search Extender tool, which offered high-speed Internet index searching and data warehousing capabilities. Early in 2001, IBM paid $1 billion for rival Informix Corp., which had begun adding XML support to its Internet Foundation DBMS in October of 1999. Along with bolstering IBM's database management offerings, gaining access to the 100,000 Informix clients also boosted IBM's market share. Many analysts predict that the rivalry between IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft will only intensify as each firm scrambles to added increased functionality to its line of DBMS products.