DataDirect Connects Data for .Net Apps

DataDirect Technologies Inc. is upgrading its database connectivity software to make it easier for database administrators to consistently access data residing in an IT environment running multiple operating systems.

This week, the company, a division of Progress Software Corp., will introduce Version 2.1 of DataDirect Connect for .Net, which offers enhanced connection failover and client-side load balancing capabilities.

The software for environments that run Microsoft Corp.s .Net also adds support for the 10g and Real Application Clusters versions of Oracle Corp.s namesake DBMS.

In addition, the DataDirect upgrade can use PL/SQL Table type as input to stored procedures. The upgrade offers password and user ID encryption for IBMs DB2 database and supports Sybase Inc.s Adaptive Server Enterprise.

For broader database connectivity needs, DataDirect will release this week Connect for JDBC 3.4 and Connect for ODBC 5.0.

But the companys featured release will be its connectivity solution for .Net, which also links tightly with Microsofts Visual Studio .Net development software. Through this support, the new DataDirect software will reduce worries about bugs or errors from developers plates, officials said.

“People have indicated to us they want to solve performance problems without throwing more hardware at it,” said John Goodson, vice president of product operations at DataDirect, of Rockville, Md. “Weve moved the point of emphasis” from the network bottleneck to broad integration.

Lillian Vernon Corp.s decision to employ .Net as the basis of future development created a data connectivity issue that had to be resolved.

The catalog retailer, in Rye, N.Y., needed to access files in DB2 databases housed on IBM zSeries and iSeries servers from a .Net application that was constantly being updated as orders changed. Lillian Vernon deployed DataDirect Connect for .Net 2.0.

“We found we were lacking a way to access data live,” said Ellis Admire, director of IS for Lillian Vernon. “With this process, youre doing a direct retrieval. Were getting information instantaneously.”

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