Abstract datatypes and extensible RDBMS
In my recent Stonebraker-oriented post about database theory and practice over the decades, I wrote
I used to overrate the importance of abstract datatypes, in large part due to Mike’s influence. I got over it. He should too. They’re useful, to the point of being a checklist item, but not a game-changer. A big part of the problem is [that] different parts of a versatile DBMS would prefer to do different things with memory.
and then left an IOU for a survey of abstract datatypes/RDBMS extensibility. Let’s get to it.
Perhaps the most popular term was actually object/relational DBMS, but I’ve never understood the etymolygy on that one.
Although I call RDBMS extensibility a “checklist item”, the list of products that can check it off is actually pretty short.
- PostgreSQL has the granddaddy implementation.
- Its ideas were commercialized as Illustra, which was bought by Informix, which later was bought by IBM.
- Oracle has one of the major implementations.
- IBM has one of the major implementations.
- Sybase has struggled with implementing the technology.
- So did Microsoft SQL Server, which of course started with the Sybase code line.
Surely there are more, but at the moment I can’t really think of which they are.
| Categories: Database management systems, IBM, Informix, Ingres, Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase | 22 Comments |
Notes on the technology supporting packaged application software
This is part of a three-post series on enterprise application software over the decades, meant to serve as background to a DBMS2 post on issues in enterprise apps.
- The first lays out very general issues in understanding and subdividing this multi-faceted sector.
- The second calls out characteristics of specific application areas.
- The third (this one) discusses application software products’ underlying technology.
0. I’d like to discuss the technology underneath packaged application software. To create some hope of the discussion being coherent, let’s split apps into a few categories:
- Major/core suite, large enterprises — e.g. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).
- Major/core suite, smaller enterprises — e.g., the province of Progress and Intersystems VARs (Value-Added Resellers).
- Remarkably distributed applications. This is where a lot of the more unusual technology choices cluster.
- Other point solutions. Sometimes, a guy just needs a catch-all category. 🙂
1. The idea of bundling ERP (or its predecessor MRP) with an underlying DBMS has been around for a long time.
- Cullinet and Cincom tried it, but with pre-relational DBMS. Oops.
- Oracle has always had that strategy.
- A sizable minority of SAP’s customers ran
And for smaller enterprises, it has been the norm, not the exception.
| Categories: Application software, Cullinet, Database management systems, IBM, Informix, Microsoft, Oracle, Pre-relational era, SAP, Sybase | 6 Comments |
Enterprise application software — generalities
This is part of a three-post series on enterprise application software over the decades, meant to serve as background to a DBMS2 post on issues in enterprise apps.
- The first (this one) lays out very general issues in understanding and subdividing this multi-faceted sector.
- The second calls out characteristics of specific application areas.
- The third discusses application software products’ underlying technology.
1. There can actually be significant disagreement as to what is or isn’t an enterprise application. I tend to favor definitions that restrict the category to (usually) server software, which manages transactions, customer interactions, financial records and things like that. Some other definitions are even more expansive, including personal productivity software such as Microsoft Office, computer-aided engineering systems and the like.
2. Historically, application software has existed mainly to record and route information, commonly from people to machines and back. Indeed, one could say that applications are characterized by (up to) five (overlapping) aspects, which may be abbreviated as:
- Database design.
- Workflow/business process.
- User interface.
- Social/collaboration.
- Analytics.
The first four of those five items fit into my “record and route information” framework.
| Categories: Application software, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP | 6 Comments |
Application databases
In my recent post on data messes, I left an IOU for a discussion of application databases. I’ve addressed parts of that subject before, including in a 2013 post on data model churn and a 2012 post on enterprise application history, both of which cite examples mentioned below. Still, there’s a lot more that could be said, because the essence of an operational application is commonly its database design. So let’s revisit some history.
In many cases, installing an application allows enterprises to collect the underlying data, electronically, for the first time ever. In other cases the app organizes data that was already there in some previous form. Either way, applications tend to greatly change the way data is managed and stored.
| Categories: Application software, SAP | 5 Comments |
Corporate culture in enterprise IT — the dignity crowd
These days, when one thinks of corporate culture in the tech industry, what comes to mind are probably:
- Internet juggernauts — Google, Facebook and their younger siblings.
- The cheapskates at Amazon.
- Brogrammers.
- Etc.
Most of that is at the internet companies, although there are exceptions — any kind of companies can have ping-pong tables, beanbag chairs, and a bunch of dogs* running around the office.
*I mean literal pooches, not bad products. WibiData used to even post headshots of the dogs on their employee page.
But there was a time, before the internet era, when similar things could be said of enterprise IT companies. The biggest fuss about culture was perhaps made among the more buttoned-down crowd, including IBM (most famously), MSA (the example that made me think of this subject), and EDS (who commissioned a Ken Follett book about themselves). They are all I have space for in this post. But there were also the beginnings of recognizable Silicon Valley start-up culture, and I hope to discuss that in the future.
The dignity crowd
I still chuckle when I see an IBMer in a company-issued polo shirt, because there was a time when IBM had a strict dress code of conservative suits and ties. Along with that went never drinking alcohol in a customer setting, in an era when boozy business meals were the norm. The point of all these rules, I think, was twofold. First, IBM wanted to be seen as a trusted, dignified adviser to customer organizations. Second, IBM generally wanted some kind of rules so that the behemoth corporation would be a team.
And IBM was more than a collection of people; it was an organization. Employees with 20+ year service might average one city-to-city move per year. (Hence the joke that IBM stood for I’ve Been Moved.) But whoever was involved with your account — if your systems stopped working, IBM would do whatever it took to get you back running fast. And a large fraction of IBM’s sales effort was spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) as to whether rival vendors would care for customers equally well.
EDS (Electronic Data Systems, founded by Ross Perot) fancied itself as a cross between IBM and the US military. Even computer operators had to be clean-shaven and wear jacket and tie. A large fraction of hires were military veterans,* and an extreme “Do it now! No excuses for failure will be accepted!” ethos flowed through the company. Read more
| Categories: EDS, IBM, MSA | 4 Comments |
John Imlay, the jolliest huckster
John Imlay passed away last week. Let me start by saying:
- John was a jolly huckster. Of the entrepreneurs I’ve known with manic amounts of sales energy, he’s the one I can least imagine saying or doing an unkind thing. Indeed, the breathless bit about John’s “kindheartedness” toward the end of this 2010 article doesn’t ring too false.*
- John wasn’t technically the founder of MSA, but he might as well have been. (Analogy: Steve Case at AOL.) When he got there, it was Management Science Atlanta, a failing hodgepodge of tiny businesses. He turned into Management Science America, a leading software company of its day, and the one that “should” have become what SAP is today.
- My 2006 post on MSA Memories has 90 comments, the vast majority of which are from former MSA employees who loved working there.
*Not as persuasive is the story about the missed chance to buy Microsoft in 1981. I knew a LOT of folks at MSA in the 1980s, and nobody ever mentioned that. Also, the story has an obviously wrong Microsoft fat (what city it was in).
John Imlay was a showman, best known for giving speeches with live animals or other dramatic visual aids, as per this short 1994 New York Times interview. But he was also a tireless, lead-from-the-front seller. An MSA salesman who booked John into an exhausting schedule of sales calls could expect a return visit from his CEO soon, because he was using Imlay’s time optimally. Indeed, I didn’t really know John all that well, probably for a couple of reasons:
- He was rarely around when I visited; he was much more likely to be out on the road selling.
- This was back in my stock analyst days, and I generally spent more time with detail-oriented folks, numbers- and product-oriented ones alike.
| Categories: Cullinet, MSA | 2 Comments |
Larry Ellison memories
Larry Ellison had an official job change, and will be CTO and Executive Chairman of Oracle — with the major product groups reporting to him — instead of CEO. I first met Larry 31 years ago, and hung out with him quite a bit at times. So this feels like time for a retrospective.
For starters, let me say:
- I met Larry Ellison the same year I learned of him, which was 1983. We were in fairly active touch until the late 1990s. Then we drifted apart. That period corresponds roughly to the eras I characterized in my Oracle history overview as Hypergrowth, Plateau, and Professionalism.
- With Larry as with other “larger than life” industry figures I’ve met, what you get in private and what you see in public are pretty similar. I’ve had high-intensity dinner conversations with Larry (numerous times), Bill Gates (a few times) and Ross Perot (once) that are quite in line with their public demeanors.
- With Larry, facts can be mutable things. The first time I met him, I came away with the impression he had a PhD. The second time, it was only a masters degree. Ten years later, he’d almost graduated from the University of Chicago, but had failed or not take a French exam. And I gather his educational resume has retreated a little further since.
- Larry is hilarious, in a scathing way, and an excellent story-teller. Unfortunately, his humor rarely translates well to out-of-context print.
Some anecdotes: Read more
| Categories: Database management systems, Oracle | 6 Comments |
20th Century DBMS success and failure
As part of my series on the keys to and likelihood of success, I’d like to consider some historical examples in various categories of data management.
A number of independent mainframe-based pre-relational DBMS vendors “crossed the chasm”, but none achieved anything resembling market dominance; that was reserved for IBM. Success when they competed against each other seemed to depend mainly on product merits and the skills of individual sales people or regional sales managers.
IBM killed that business by introducing DB2, a good product with very good strategic marketing from a still-dominant vendor. By “very good strategic marketing” I mean that IBM both truly invented and successfully market-defined the relational DBMS concept, including such conceptual compromises as:
- Ted Codd’s 12 rules, not that anybody — even IBM — actually followed them all.
- SQL as the standard, rather than the probably superior QUEL.
In the minicomputer world, however, hardware vendors lacked such power, and independent DBMS vendors thrived. Indeed, Oracle and Ingres rode to success on the back of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and other minicomputer vendors, including the payments they got to port their products to various platforms.* The big competitive battle was Oracle vs. Ingres, about which I can say for starters: Read more
| Categories: Database management systems, IBM, Informix, Ingres, Oracle, Sybase, Teradata | 9 Comments |
Software delivery and pricing — the first 55 years
The commercial computing, software and services industries have existed for half a century or so each. It might be interesting to review how their pricing and delivery models have evolved over time.
1960s and 1970s
Modern IT is commonly dated from the introduction of the IBM 360 mainframe in 1964-5. But even before then, there was a growing industry in what we’d now call outsourced services, specifically in payroll processing; major players included Automatic Data Processing (ADP), the company that gave us Senator Frank Lautenberg, and a variety of banks. This was (and to this day remains) a comprehensive service, priced by unit of work (e.g., number of payroll checks cut).
IBM mainframes, which quickly came to dominate the market, were in the 1960s and 70s commonly rented. IBM software that ran on them was hence typically priced on a rental/subscription basis as well. The independent packaged software companies, however, often preferred to get paid up front,* and hence sold perpetual licenses to their software. Annual maintenance fees for the licensed software started in the range of 10% of the perpetual license or even less, but migrated up to today’s 20-22% range.
| Categories: Analytics, Application software, ASK Computer Systems, Computer Associates, Computer services, Cullinet, EDS, IBM, MSA, Oracle | 10 Comments |
DBMS acquisitions
Recently I expressed doubts about Actian’s DBMS-conglomerate growth strategy. For context, perhaps I should review other DBMS vendors’ acquisition strategies in the past. Some — quite a few — worked out well; others — including many too minor to list — did not.
In the pre-relational days, it was common practice to buy products that hadn’t succeeded yet, and grow with them. Often these were programs written at enterprises, rather than third-party packages. Most of Cullinet’s product line, including its flagship DBMS IDMS, was came into the company that way. ADR, if memory serves, acquired the tiny vendor who created DATACOM/DB.
Then things slowed down. A Canadian insurance company oddly bought Computer Corporation of America, to utter non-success. (At least I got an investment banking finder’s fee on the deal.) Computer Associates, which did brilliantly in acquiring computer operations software, had a much rockier time with DBMS. It acquired Cullinet, Applied Data Research, and ASK/Ingres — among others — and didn’t have much growth or other joy with any of them.
Indeed, Ingres has been acquired three times, and hasn’t accomplished much for any of the acquirers (ASK, Computer Associates, Actian).
I used to think that Oracle’s acquisition of RDB provided key pieces of what became Oracle’s own extensibility technology. Andy Mendelsohn, however, disputed this vehemently — at least by his standards of vehemence — and his sources are better than mine. Rather, I now believe as I wrote in 2011:
… while Oracle’s track record with standalone DBMS acquisitions is admirable (DEC RDB, MySQL, etc.), Oracle’s track record of integrating DBMS acquisitions into the Oracle product itself is not so good. (Express? Essbase? The text product line? None of that has gone particularly well.)
Experiences were similar for some other relational DBMS pioneers. Read more