Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!odi!dlw
From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Index Technology and Object-Oriented Databases
Message-ID: <1989Aug17.195927.28551@odi.com>
Date: 17 Aug 89 19:59:27 GMT
Reply-To: dlw@odi.com
Organization: Object Design, Inc.
Lines: 48

There's a lot of interesting information about Index Technology in an
article entitled "Start-up Index Tech Jump-Started CASE", by John
Desmond, in Software Magazine, April 1989, page 84.  Like most
articles in the industry press, it doesn't go into any deep technical
detail; in fact, it's mainly about Index's history and business
strategy, rather than technical issues.  But here are some brief
excerpts that you might find interesting and relevant:

Index is working on a major rewrite of Excelerator.  It is a partial
rewrite from C to C++.

The major news of long-term impact is the evolving relationship of
Index with Ontologic of Billerica, Mass, the reincarnation of Mosaic
Technologies.  Index plans to base all its future products on
Ontologic's new generation object-oriented database, hence the rewrite
into the object-oriented language, C++.  Index has agreed to license
the technology from Ontologic.

Index co-founder Burt Rubenstein, vice president and chief
technologist, said the object-oriented technology "gives us the
ability to bring higher functionality products to the market faster."
The object model is better than the relational model for programs that
structure "a small number of heterogeneous objects with a large number
of relationships between them."

Current versions of Excelerator are built atop a file management system,
not a database.

Index is the faraway market leader in PC Case tools today, with 41% of
the market, vs 15% for KnowledgeWare, 15% for Nastec and 6% for Cadre
Technologies, according to Sentry [Sentry Market Research of
Westborough, Mass]. (Respondents to the mainframe section of the
survey gave Index a 10% share of that market, followed by Texas
Instruments with 7% and Pansophic with 6%.  That is despite the fact
that Index offers no mainframe product, although Grejtak [Index's
Senior VP of Marketing and Sales] said some users run their
Excelerator dictionary on MVS mainframes.) [In an earlier posting, I
said that Index was the "largest CASE company"; apparently I was being
inaccurate, and should have said "the market leader in PC CASE tools",
at least according to this market survey.]

[Disclaimer: I don't work for Index, nor for Ontologic.  In fact,
Ontologic is or will be a competitor of Object Design; both companies
are in the OODBMS business.  I hope this provies enough material that
people can draw their own conclusions about Index Technology, etc, and
we can get back to discussion of technical issues.]

Dan Weinreb		Object Design		dlw@odi.com