Ardent Backs Away From 02; Readies Axielle Instead >BY Jason Stamper.

Ardent Software Inc says the O2 object database, which it acquired with the purchase of O2 Technology SA back in September 1997, is no longer a product in its own right. Instead O2 is relegated to the back end of a new Extensible Markup Language (XML) server which it will ship next month, code-named Axielle.

A source close to Axielle product development told Computerwire that, "Object databases are fine, but the market for them has not exactly taken off." As a result O2 will from now on merely act as a repository for XML documents, according to our source. Axielle is already in beta, and should reach general availability before the end of September. It will enable users to search, index and manage all of their documents based on the XML standard. Ardent does say that it will continue to support existing O2 customers.

Ardent also recently entered a partnership with DataChannel Inc, a provider of what it calls XML-based Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) solutions. Ardent will resell DataChannel's EIP server, RIO 3.2, to augment its DataStage suite of data extract, transformation and load tools. Rio is essentially a browser interface to XML data sources - Ardent is slapping the front-end on the data piped from DataStage. Ironically DataChannel also has an XML repository of its own, XStore, which it announced in May this year. Since DataChannel has both the front-end portal and back-end repository technology that Ardent is having to piece together via a partnership, it makes you wonder whether DataChannel would have been a better acquisition target for Unidata than O2. Ardent wouldn't comment on whether DataChannel might be on its radar for acquisition in the future.

Ardent, a Westboro, Massachusetts-based data warehousing and metadata company has struggled to find a convincing reason for its customers to move over to the O2 object database management system (ODBMS) ever since its acquisition in September 1997 (CI No 3,240). Ardent used to talk about how it gave it a breakout strategy to evolve beyond its core Pick and Prime Information nested database businesses. It would offer customers of its aging Unidata database new tools to migrate applications over to O2's object database. But despite the push, customers of the trusty relational database refused to move; its relational databases Unidata and Universe are not only still supported but are still being actively developed. Ardent Software itself was formed through the merger of Pick houses Vmark Software and Unidata in October 1997.

Further out Ardent is working on a version of DataStage which will enable data extract, transformation and load of unstructured data - the likes of Word documents, web pages, images, graphs, presentations and charts. This is currently code-named InfoStage, Computerwire has learned, and should see the light of day around mid-year 2000.