A Point in Time
I appreciated Michael Gonzales' ("Last One Standing," Sept. 29, 2000) keen interest in highlighting the important role of spatial data management in the business intelligence (BI) domain. Unfortunately, nearly every point he made regarding Oracle was completely wrong, including the product's name - Oracle Spatial Cartridge. (The correct name for the product is Oracle Spatial.) Here are the other statements in question:
"Oracle has taken a different track with its Spatial Cartridge. It has elected to store spatial data as a binary large object (BLOB)." Beginning with release 8.1.5, Oracle Spatial stores geometry as an object type. Previous to Oracle8i, Oracle stored the geometry in relational tables. Oracle has never stored geometry as a BLOB.
"Performing operations against the spatial data, users have access to a combination of extended SQL and C functions, known as 'packages.'" Using our object extensibility framework, Oracle Spatial has integrated indexing and query of spatial data directly into the kernel of the DBMS, very much like IBM. The spatial query syntax is SQL - as defined by the OpenGIS and ISO standards.
"The particular solution, although effective, is not compliant with established standards." Oracle Spatial is the only DBMS vendor that has conformed to the current industry standard for spatial data: OpenGIS Simple Features for SQL. Furthermore, Oracle will test for conformance for SQL/MM Spatial as soon as the conformance tests are made available in early 2001.
"In this sense, the Spatial Cartridge is somewhere between an application server and an extended kernel." You must be confusing Oracle Spatial with ESRI SDE, a product that IBM has licensed from ESRI. SDE provides a middleware spatial data solution. In contrast, Oracle Spatial technology is completely integrated with the kernel type manager, indexing, and query engine.
"In contrast, anything short of adherence to standards binds you to a particular technology suite or guarantees future integration problems. In the case of O8i, third-party products will have to accommodate Oracle's custom C functions. This process may require an extra layer of middleware." All Oracle Spatial functions are accessed using SQL, plain and simple. Moreover, we have added Java APIs to enable third-party vendors to access Oracle Spatial. No middleware layer is needed.
Xavier Lopez
Product Manager, Oracle Spatial
Oracle Corp.
Redwood Shores, Calif.
Michael Gonzales responds:
Thank you for your comments and interest in clarifying for the readers the latest capabilities of Oracle8i. As I wrote in that article, measuring products on a feature-by-feature basis is difficult because they are constantly changing. Your response here confirms my view.
Although I appreciate your zeal, the article clearly and accurately reflects the facts at the time of the research. Allow me to respond to some of the specific points you raised:
Admittedly, Oracle does not use the term "BLOB" to refer to the storage of binary large objects, but that's purely a marketing choice. Instead, Oracle uses the term "LOB," of which, according to Oracle documentation, there are at least two types, including character LOBs and binary LOBs. Oracle8i Spatial stores data in binary.
Regarding the concept of "packages": Again, this issue is definitely one of nomenclature. My use of the term in the article is consistent with Oracle technical documentation.
The Open GIS organization's (OGIS) Web page (www.opengis.org/techno/conformance.htm#products) indeed says that Oracle Spatial Cartridge is OGIS-certified. However, according to that source, as of October 6, 2000, the Oracle8i Spatial schema has not been so certified. Perhaps you need to take this matter up with OGIS.
According to documentation at Oracle Technology
Network, Oracle uses object types of spatial as opposed to spatial data types.
Finally, although I admit that as of October 2000 your product was called Oracle8i Spatial, it has gone through several name changes, including Spatial Data Option and Spatial Cartridge.
Thanks again for your feedback!
Left Out
"Last One Standing" was a very timely article for my company, Anheuser-Busch. Every other year we re-evaluate whether Oracle is the correct BI platform for us and if we should move to DB2 Universal Database or NCR Teradata (a product that was suspiciously missing from your article). Just two days ago, I was notified that we need to re-discuss this topic.
However, I disagree with your explanation of why IBM lost ground to Oracle in the first place. In my opinion, IBM always had a superior product but was caught flat-footed without an open architecture early on in the client/server gold rush.
For us, that's the crux of our problem. We already have Oracle rolled-out across the country, and any decision to migrate to DB2 or Teradata will need to demonstrate clear business value. To date, we don't have a compelling business case to make the change - but we do have a hunch that Oracle is not the most scalable option.
Colleen Miller
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.
St. Louis, Mo.
Michael Gonzales responds:
Thanks for your comments. Although I agree that NCR is an important player in data warehousing, it is still only a niche player. Oracle and IBM maintain the broadest product selection and depth covering all aspects under the BI umbrella. For that reason, Teradata was not included in the research.
Survey Wrap-Ups
Summaries of recent survey findings on breaking industry issues.
- Recent research from Delphi Group and Survey.com, covering business and IT professionals across a variety of industries, reports that more than 43 percent of organizations will have deployed business portals by the close of calendar year 2000 - many in as little as six weeks to six months.
- Forrester Research estimates that e-commerce will account for 8.6 percent of worldwide sales of goods and services in 2004. The expansion of online trade, however, will be highly concentrated, with 12 countries representing nearly 85 percent of worldwide Internet sales. The United States will continue to be the global e-commerce leader with online sales reaching $3.2 trillion in 2004.
- Merrill Lynch Capital Markets sees the market for enterprise portals growing to $14 billion in 2002, with more than half of all businesses in the U.S. incorporating an enterprise portal as their primary method for accessing information and resources by the year 2001.
- A recent study by Scarborough Research reveals that e-shoppers (adults age 18+ who shop on the Internet) represent a quarter of the total adults who access the Internet. The group is almost 60 percent male, overwhelmingly college-educated (70 percent), and employed in white-collar positions (65 percent). More than a third (36 percent) have a household income of $75K or more.
- Evans Data Corp. released the second volume of its continuing Linux Developers Survey series, a comprehensive study of more than 300 Linux Developers interviewed in August 2000. The study reveals there was a more than 50 percent increase in Linux applications being written for wireless devices in the last six months.
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