Lisa Vaas

Its a food-processing company. Like lots of companies in these days of consolidation, it worried about melding two merged companies collections of databases, legacy applications and data sets. With some 7,000 employees, six processing plants and a tidy collection of farms, getting to a centralized data repository meant gluing together separate ledgers, separate payrolls, separate […]

“Federate,” IBM says as it pitches its latest data integration installment: to wit, the folding of ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) technology acquired in IBMs Ascential acquisition into its WebSphere/Information Management family of data integration products. IBM says, “Leave your data wherever it is”—in disparate databases or what have you. Somewhat magically, IBM technology will […]

The Enterprise Grid Alliance—a consortium of about 30 vendors and enterprise grid users—on Tuesday will release the industrys first Reference Model for enterprise grids. The model, downloadable from the EGAs site, includes three vendor-neutral components: a common lexicon of grid terms, a model that classifies the management and life cycles of the components required for […]

Security experts have expressed dismay about new legislation that will usher in the nations first national ID system—citing a lack of confidence in the governments ability to employ the technology in such a way as to prevent citizens from being preyed upon by identity thieves. The Real ID Act of 2005, added on to the […]

WESTBORO, Mass.—Like a cherry on top of a sundae, IBMs Information Management division on Wednesday put its newly acquired Ascential data integration technology on top of a stack of acquisitions that, it says, is deeper and broader than any existing content management technology. “For the last 40 years, the IT industry and database companies have […]

WESTBORO, Mass.—IBM on Wednesday unveiled the first fruits of its Ascential Software Corp. integration: to wit, the next generation of WebSphere Data Integration Suite—an iteration that ties together into one common look and feel what was once a collection of disparate tools—and new Federated Records Management software, which promises to enable companies to reach across […]

Security experts and civil libertarians reacted with skepticism to the governments recent decision to reconsider data protection measures for new RFID passports. The “e-passports,” as theyve been nicknamed, were originally slated for spring release in the Los Angeles Passport Agency but are now planned for issuance in August beginning with diplomatic passports, according to a […]

Pervasive Software Inc.s packaging of the open-source Postgres database has been certified by Novell Inc. for its enterprise Linux server, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, the company announced on Thursday. Pervasive, of Austin, Texas, traditionally in the business of making embedded databases, in January attempted to break into the mainstream corporate database market, choosing the […]

SAP is emitting a dizzying flow of news from its Sapphire users conference in Copenhagen this week as it partners with giants in the tech world: IBM, Siemens, Microsoft and Macromedia. At this rate, analysts say, Oracle better learn how to partner like its arch rival, lest it wind up the wallflower at the enterprise […]

Seeking to grab Oracle customers, IBM and SAP announced on Tuesday a version of IBMs DB2 database thats optimized to run SAP applications. The Oracle arch rivals are also beefing up joint marketing, development and maintenance plans. More than 60 percent of SAP AG customers are currently “locked in” to Oracle databases, according to IBM—a […]

SmartDB Corp.s latest version of its tool kit, SmartDB Workbench 10.0, promises to help systems integrators get their hands around the new API capabilities in Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle Corp. has plugged APIs into its E-Business Suite as a means to enable third-party applications and tools to capture and execute business rules within the database. […]

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—The patent wars are red-hot. The OSI (Open Source Initiative) board earlier this month issued a statement condemning open-source license proliferation as “a significant barrier to open-source deployment.” For its part, Intel requested in late March that OSI withdraw one of Intels patents from future use. Meta Group analyst Charlie Garry is predicting […]