DB Updates Ease Web Services

Best-of-breed XML database developers Ipedo Inc., Sonic Software Corp. and Sleepycat Software Inc. are enhancing their respective native XML database software to make it easier for enterprises to use and manage XML data in Web services environments.

Ipedo, for example, late this month will release Version 3.3 of its XML Information Hub, which boasts three new components. The first, called content conversion, automatically converts PDF, Microsoft Corp. Word and other non-XML documents into XML. The auto-organization component organizes, merges and transforms inbound content according to business rules, said Ipedo officials, in Redwood City, Calif. The third new piece, a universal XML Query engine, provides local and remote content and data source searching and updating using the XQuery standard.

Some of the Ipedo upgrades new features are compelling for user Thor Anderson, who is manager of program development at Collegis Inc. Anderson is working with The Texas A&M University System to take online digital library resources and put them into a repository with additional, educationally specific metadata. "The more that [XQuery] engine is improved and sped up and usable, thats important," said Anderson, in Salt Lake City. "Ill be using that extensively to search these metadata records."

Separately, Sonic late this summer will roll out a suite of integration products, called Sonic Business Integration Suite, that includes Sonic XML Server, a renamed and enhanced version of the Excelon XIS (Extensible Information Server) native XML database that the company acquired last fall. Enhancements to the XML database include a Web services-style interface laid over the XML processing and storage engine within XIS, said Sonic officials, in Bedford, Mass.

For its part, Sleepycat next month will release Version 4.2 of Berkeley DB, its open-source embedded database. The update is geared to serve as a sturdy base for Berkeley DB XML, the companys first native XML data store.