IBM Musters Partners For Cheetah Release
Bernie Spang, IBM's director of marketing strategy for data servers, dubbed the effort a "call to action" for partners. The company hopes ISVs will validate their applications on the new database and participate in the launch.
IDS is one of several databases, IBM acquired from Informix six years ago and is strong in retail, telecommunications and some other verticals. Its traditional strength has been its integrated OLTP capabilities. IBM claims such customers as Home Depot, Verizon, and IMPIRE AG, the online gaming company. Wal-Mart is also an IDS customer.
The goal is to have a bevy of apps ready to go for the launch date, which IBM would not disclose, but sources said will be on or around June 12. The company wants to have a solution guide and online resources pulled together. Partners can get more information about the roll out next week at this IBM site.
The company also plans an IDS segment for its Information On Demand conference this fall.
Beta tester Gillani, a Richardson, Texas-based maker of ERP and supply chain management applications, tested the creation of a complex report, that involves multiple table joins—accessing more than 100 tables and complicated SQL statements. With the current IDS 10, that task takes 415 seconds to execute. Cheetah gets that down to 75 seconds.
Gillani president and CEO Syed Kamal also cited dynamic SQL tracing that could help developers troubleshoot their code more easily.
In addition, IBM improved the network administration console by giving DBAs who monitor remote databases graphical, easy-to-read views on remote systems. "It integrates admin tasks with easy to use screens, charts, and graphs and is very intuitive. That was lacking before—it was all very character-based," Kamal noted.
Another beta tester, TECSYS, of Montreal, is also bullish. CTO Catalin Badea said this "version 11 release" represents the largest improvement in IDS in quite some time. Badea also cited the admin console, row-level security using label-based access control, task scheduling and the ability to analyze recently executed statements.