Niche Players

Niche companies have provided technology to search unstructured data, including Verity Inc., which recently partnered with Yahoo Inc. to deliver Web search results within its enterprise search platforms. Autonomy Corp. and Mamma.com are two other players among many that recently announced new enterprise search moves. And then there are technologies such as Software AG Inc.s Tamino XML Server that natively store XML. The problem there, Perna said, is that such products lack relational database support and therefore lack RDBMSes scalability, security and performance.
Beyond the appeal of a hybrid relational/XML database lies the appeal of going with a player whos been around for a long time, Warzecha said. "Yes, this has become a huge issue for organizations in terms of looking at how technology can help suspend some of the problems theyre facing," he said. "Translate that in terms of who is best-positioned to benefit from this … since this is fundamentally about risk over a long-term time, and you get into the issue of trust. Which vendors do you trust who have the capability of solving these problems with you? You find large-scale vendors around a long time are better-positioned versus small, privately held companies in this arena." Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest database news, reviews and analysis.