Oracle unveils content management service

by Tom Sullivan

July 18, 2001 —

Oracle Corp. today announced a new service that ties into the 9i database and application server, and enhances both products ability to manage a broader array of data types, plus organize and consolidate content.

The service, known as Collaborative Content Management Services, includes an enhanced Oracle IFS (Internet File System) dubbed Oracle Files Online, that essentially extends its ability to associate metadata with file types. So companies can add information to files that makes searching them more effective, such as author, topic, department, purpose, just to name a few, according to George Demarest, director of database marketing at Oracle, in Redwood Shores, California.

Other pieces of the service, already in the 9i database and application server, are Oracle Ultra Search and the ability to handle XML (Extensible Markup Language) data.

"The reason for this initiative is to make content more self-describing," Demarest said.

Indeed, most of the big database vendors such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are looking to extend their data management capabilities to a variety of data types. Most recently, all of the vendors added XML support to their offerings in one form or another, which helps to enable self-describing data.

"XML and content management will be more intertwined," Demarest said.

Armonk, New York-based IBM, for its part, has a Content Management product of its own, which works in conjunction with the company's DB2 database to manage a number of data types in a variety of locations. Big Blue officials said that they plan to fold Content Manager into DB2 when it is mature, as the company has done with past products, but wouldn't comment on a timeframe.

Microsoft has Content Management Server 2001, a re-branding of the technology it acquired from NCompass Labs in April. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft showed off the new server at its TechEd developer conference last month in Atlanta.

While IBM's Content Manager furthers the company's federated data approach, in which the software and the database are capable of managing data in other sources, Oracle's services toe the centralized data management line it has been preaching.

The jury is still out on which approach is more effective.

"Ideally, if everything is stored in one place, you've got pretty good control over it," said Mike Schiff, a vice president and analyst at Current Analysis, a Sterling, Va.-based market research firm.

Schiff pointed out, however, that for companies that already have various data sources, migrating it into one repository or even an integrated conglomeration is an arduous task.

Oracle Collaborative Content Management Services will be offered later this year as a hosted service on Oracle.com and later will be available via third parties as well, Demarest said.

InfoWorld.com