IBM Queues Up Stinger, Information Integrator Betas

Software database

The next release of DB2, code-named Stinger, will be offered with a new "Partition Advisor" to make it easier for administrators to configure DB2 systems across clusters, Janet Perna, general manager of IBM Software's Data Management group, told CRN Monday.

Whether that would ship as part of the database or as a separately priced option has not been decided. While Oracle executives have touted their company's shared-everything clustering capability as the be-all and end-all, shared-nothing clustering like that offered by IBM and Teradata is fine for many applications, database analysts have said.

Clustering, which distributes workloads across processors and systems, has become a hot button lately, with software vendors touting its ability to increase computing scalability on inexpensive standard hardware. Later this week, MySQL, maker of an open-source and commercial database for Linux and Windows, will announce pricing for its own clustering capability.

IBM executives have already telegraphed many new features, including Stinger's commitment for full and equal support of Microsoft. Net and Java programming environments. IBM has also said the database, which runs on Windows, Unix and Linux, will also take advantage of the latest-and-greatest capabilities in the Linux 2.6 kernel.

In addition, the company is prepping a beta of DB2 Information Integrator, which will add enterprise-capable search technologies developed by IBM researchers. "Think of a search capability like Google but able to access information that's in an Oracle database, e-mail or a piece of Web content," Perna said.

For more on IBM Research, see CRN.

The search capability has been used in IBM's own intranet, where some 300,000 employees have been hammering on it for about a year, Perna said.

The next Information Integrator, code-named Masala, will tap into new data sources including SAP and Siebel Systems applications. The current Information Integrator accesses structured data in IBM, Oracle or other databases, mainframe IMS and VSAM data, a number of life-sciences databases and also nonstructured data in e-mail or Web content. The new frontier is application-specific data, Perna said.