^PublishDate
Application Development
Lazy Software Has Better Idea for Storing Data
Lazy Software has a better idea. A better idea for how to store data. "The relational model of data is at the core of a lot of complexity in software development," says Simon Williams, CEO and chairman, the founder of Lazy Software and the founder of Synon, the model-driven development tool company eventually acquired by Computer Associates. "I concluded we had to change the way we store data, and I came up with the associative model of data."
The relational model of data was originated in 1969 by Ted Codd of IBM, became dominant in the 1980s and has gone unchallenged, except for the object-oriented database model, which has not won high acceptance despite predictions it would in the early 1990s. "[Object-oriented] is a great way to program and manage memory, but not a good way to manage data on disk," Williams says. Thus while much has change in the computing world in the past 30 years, the dominant standard for storing data has not changed.
The approach taken by Lazy, founded in 1998 in the U.K., is to combine database architecture and application development to achieve up to 30 times faster productivity than conventional methods, Williams says. The executive team is the same as founded Synon in 1984.
Data in relational tables does not understand its own structure. That understanding is linked into the database design. That makes it expensive to maintain and very labor-intensive. The associate model is a database structure that replaces relational tables with a simpler structure that does not change when the structure of data changes. The associative model builds in the "triple store" approach, which never exploited commercially because it was semantically too limited. "So we added a column, and the insight is the association," Williams says. "You no longer need primary keys and foreign keys," which in turn enables a different programming technique.
Lazy's product, dubbed Sentences, consists of a database engine written in Java and a deployment environment. The product is offered in enterprise and personal editions. The current release is Version 2.0; Version 3.0, scheduled for release later in 2002, will focus more on making applications more scalable, Williams says. Lazy uses Sentences to build applications that run the company, using a database of approximately 350Mb successfully, he says.
Reuters, which was seeking high development productivity, was an early tester of Lazy's approach.. Within 10 days of starting out with the product, Reuters achieved design and deployment of a Web-based system that managed recruiting. It registers vacant positions and selectively offers them to qualified candidates. "The reason it got done so rapidly is that we didn't have to write any new programs. Once we defined the database, there was no more work to do," Williams says.
Right now the company is in a proving stage with its new approach and needs more customer experiences. They are hoping to attract partners to build their own implementations to prove the value of the technology. "We'd like to offer an alternative to relational," Williams says.
An unlimited server license, bundled with education and consulting to get a customer up and running, costs $49,500. A rapid implementation alternative is offered for $9,750, covering installation of the software and help building the first application. At the end of two months, the customer can walk away or pay the remainder of the price, keeping the application in either case.
Competition is difficult to describe because the product poses an essential challenge to database leaders Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, but is far from proven, especially on an enterprise scale. Then in rapid Web development, the product presents alternative to tools such as Neuvis, Silverstream and WebGain. Still, as of late last year, the company had about 14 U.S. customers and was seeking partners.
Lazy will be interesting to watch. "For me personally," Williams says, "I had to do this or get out of application development"
www.lazysoft.com
Security
Application Security Aims to Protect Oracle Users
Application Security of New York, in the business of penetration detection and vulnerability assessment, has released AppDetective for Oracle Version 2.0, an application security scanner designed to perform network-based penetration tests.
The company, founded last year by a team with experience in software security, uses its own security methodology and knowledge of Oracle's security vulnerabilities in particular. AppDetective locates, examines, reports on and helps fix security holes and misconfigurations. Future releases will support Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase SQL Server, Lotus Domino and IBM's DB2.
The product detects version numbers, patch sets applied, host operating system type, and other database inventory information. The product can be used to create non-intrusive attack simulations. Penetration tests and security audits can be remotely performed on target Oracle databases over the Internet or from desktop PCs.
Reports identify the Oracle security vulnerabilities and configuration errors, for individual applications or across multiple ones. Customers find this effective in checking for compliance with new regulations and requirements concerning data security and privacy within industries such as financial services (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), healthcare ( Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)) and e-commerce (Visa Cardholder Information Security Program.)
"We are concentrated mainly on enterprise applications," says Stephen Grey, manager of product marketing for the firm, describing its differentiation. Typical vulnerabilities the AppDetective for Oracle product will detect include default password combinations that ship with Oracle Versions 7 and 8, he says. Many times, Oracle users do not change the default passwords; hackers who know what they are search for them. In the worst case, the attacker can gain complete control of the database with administrative rights. Protecting customers from these vulnerabilities "is the sole reason we exist," Grey says.
Pricing is by module for support of penetration testing and security auditing. For penetration testing, looking at the database from the outside in, is $295 per database instance. Security auditing, what someone would see once authenticated inside the database, costs $495 per database instance. A company with 100 to 200 employees and five Oracle databases may pay $3,500 in all. An enterprise license for a larger organization can cost up to $300,000.
Application Security's CTO and co-founder Aaron Newson is the co-author of the recently published Oracle Security Handbook, from Oracle Press. The book focuses on how to implement best-practice security measures covering all of the components of an Oracle environment: the operating system; database; and the network. Oracle Corporation has officially endorsed it.
Application Security is focusing on a niche opportunity area in security and as such, cited only competition from Protegrity, the Stamford, Conn., company whose Secure.Data product also targets Oracle databases and Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
Several hundred Oracle consultants have been beta-testing AppDetective.
www.appsecinc.com
E-Business Readiness
Velosel Manages the eChannel With 4.0 Release
Veloselof Mountain View, Calif., supplier of application packages that lets enterprises connect to e-procurement systems, has announced the availability of Velosel eChannel Manager 4.0. The product integrates two sell-side solutions- HubStorm eSupplier and Martquest eChannel Manager - resulting from the merger of HubStorm and Martquest to form Velosel in August 2001.
Version 4.0 combines the Martquest eChannelManager's strengths in connectivity, order management, business process workflow automation, and analytics with the HubStorm eSupplier's strengths in usability,catalog management/syndication, and built-in PunchOut and Round Trip support. The product is aimed at companies that need to manage and optimize their electronic sales channels, including corporate e-procurement systems and e-marketplaces.
The product supports the interaction between customer service representatives (CSR) and the customers, so that relationship remains supported in the electronic marketplace. The CSRs can approve purchase orders and send notifications to other team members when necessary. The product supports custom catalogs specific to each buyer, so pricing and product descriptions can be customized. Attachments such as specification sheets, graphics or documents can be included with the catalogs. Analytics tools in the product provide metrics on buyer behavior, including history and patterns.
Electronic sales channel management features support catalog creation, delivery and syndication. Connectivity with buyers is supported by a variety of formats and transaction "languages," including Ariba cXML, Commerce One xCBL, CIDSX,OBI and EDI. The product also supports a variety of open and proprietary catalog formats, including OCI, CIF and CUP. To ensure forward compatibility, Velosel is committed to providing timely software upgrades for compliance with new protocols as they are introduced.
The product is built using the Java2 Platform Edition (J2EE), and the user interface is browser-based.
The product can be acquired on a hosted basis with fees ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 per month. The customer is provided with hardware and software; the price varies based on the number of platforms, such as Ariba and Commerce One, each a single procurement platform. The product can also be acquired on a licensed basis, for a three-year term or a perpetual license. Prices on that basis start at $350,000 and go up based on the number of supported procurement platforms and the number of different selling connections required.
Velosel's customers include Hach, an industrial manufacturer, Iomega, the storage product provider, and Fastenal ,an industrial distributor.
Competition is differentiated between those who have a comprehensive reach in their application set, and those who offer pieces of the solutions. In the first category, the main competition is Trigo, which covers connectivity and catalog management and syndication. However, Velosel differentiates from Trigo on the basis of its business process automation engine that drives content and order management with business rules. Also, Velosel offers a password-protected buyer portal that links the procurement and ordering systems. The point competition has strong offerings in catalog management and order management.
Partners include Accenture, Ariba and Commerce One. "We shield the business users from the complexity of those back-end systems," says Ricardo Berrios, Velosel's vice president of marketing.
www.velosel.com
Application Development
MKS Source Integrity Goes Back to SCM Roots
Source Integrity Enterprise Edition 8.2 from MKS of Waterloo, Ontario and Burlington, Mass., improves the graphical view of a project structure and history. Formerly named Software Manager, the product supports software configuration management (SCM) on multiple platforms. It is integrated with MKS Integrity Manager, formerly named Collaboration Manager, which supports process and workflow management.
Features of the new 8.2 release include a graphical tree view with drag and drop capability, a Web browser interface (as well as a command-line interface), and it changes packages to apply or resynchronize changes from one development path to another. Also, centralized e-mail notification lets administrators define rules for groups of users; HTTP link support quickly finds supporting documentation and Web sites; and support for multilevel approval processes streamlines team communication.
Platforms supported include Windows NT/2000, Sun Solaris and Linux, and multiple databases via JDBC. The product is integrated with a number of development tools including those from Borland (JBuilder 5.0 and 6.0) WebGain, StarBase, Microsoft and Sybase.
Other features include automatic branching and merging, automatic notification of project change, release management support, promotion model support, visual differencing and merging, and "sandboxing" or private workspaces.
The product costs $4,000 per server and $750 per client seat. The average customer spends $100,000 for an implementation to support three or four servers and 200 to 300 clients.
With the new release and focus on SCM, MKS has gone "back to its roots," says Kurt Battick, assistant product manager, after a foray last year with the Vertical Sky content management-focused spinoff that "did not work." In the past year, the company has reorganized and named Philip Deck as chairman and CEO. The company stripped out the content management features that had been added to its products as part of the Vertical Sky effort.
With its focus now narrowed to the SCM market, MKS again competes with Rational, StarBase, Merant and Serena.
MKS has also updated Integrity Manager to Version 4.3, now supporting group policies for e-mail notification, and multiple levels of users and groups. This lets administrators have more control over the rules for groups of users, enabling better management of e-mail traffic in particular. The product is priced the same as Source Integrity.
In a recent customer win, MKS signed an enterprise agreement with Continental Teves, a leader in brake and chassis engineering and one of the largest suppliers of raking systems and components to the automotive industry. Continental selected Source Integrity Enterprise Edition as its global standard for SCM and plans to implement the technology in testing centers in Germany, the U.S., Sweden, Japan, and Hungary.
www.mks.com
