IBM Dribbles Out More Stinger Data

The company said it plans to show tight links between the database, code-named Stinger, and the open-source Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) next week at EclipseCon in Anaheim, Calif.

The company hopes to show it will support Eclipse developers, who are typically Java-oriented, as much as it will the Microsoft-centric .Net community.

"Both Microsoft and Java developers are very important to DB2, and both communities have popular application development environments," said Les King, senior manager of DB2 development at IBM.

Stinger, the version number of which is still unknown, is due later this year, IBM executives have said.

Next week developers can register for the technical preview of DB2 plug-ins for Eclipse and also preview plug-ins that will bring support for IBM Rational's XDE data modeling lineup.

"We will provide tight integration from DB2 plug-ins for the Eclipse framework and XDE to bring complex data modeling to Eclipse," King told CRN.

Putting Rational's data modeling in place earlier in complex development cycles will make the process easier than having to change midstream, King said.

In addition, IBM will preview a J2EE-compliant Type 4 JDBC driver. "It's a mouthful, but it's important. It means that any Java applications written to that driver can work on any Java-enabled platform and [tap into DB2 data] even if DB2 isn't deployed on that platform," he said.

The computing giant clearly has been trying to wring the most PR value from the release by meting out details over the past few months. On the eve of Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in October, IBM said Stinger would support .Net development. Two weeks ago, just before LinuxWorld Expo, IBM executives said Stinger will support the latest-and-greatest Linux 2.6 kernel and take advantage of that kernel's improved support for clustering and 64-bit machines.

Stinger will most likely have to share the database spotlight in 2004, however. Microsoft hopes to get its delayed next-generation SQL Server, Yukon out the door this year as well. Database kingpin Oracle missed its deadline to ship Oracle 10G database by the end of 2003. Some expect it to ship by the end of this month.