IBM Opens Up Viper Beta, Adds PHP Support

The company said in addition to previously disclosed information, that the hybrid database will support PHP. IBM will make the latest beta available with the Zend Core for IBM to facilitate PHP implementations.

Viper, which will carry the IBM DB2 brand, will also support three types of partitioning: range, multi-dimensional clustering and hashing, according to IBM. Bob Picciano, vice president of database servers for IBM will talk about the features and plans at the XML 2005 Conference in Atlanta.

As CRN first reported last year, the database promises "native" support for both structured and non-structured (XML) data.

As of this week, partners and customers who want to register for an open beta of the database can do so at this IBM Web site.

A handful of ISV partners also made their own Viper statements. Nextance, Redwood City, Calif., said its contract performance management software will work with this version of DB2. JustSystems, Palo Alto, Calif. likewise said it wil offer xfy Enterprise Solution for creating and running XML applications will support the new database. And Toronto-based Exegenix has enabled its XML conversion technology to work with Viper as well. Exegenix software converts Word, PDF, and WordPerfect data into XML.

Viper alpha code was made available to just 19 customer and partner testers last January. Later the company added another 21 selected testing partners.

This story was updated Wednesday afternoon with more partner information.