Ibex Object Systems ITASCA

Ibex's ITASCA object-oriented database systems introduce new flexibility in information management for customers in manufacturing, aerospace, military, internet and multimedia publishing, finance, and other industry segments that are characterized by the need to manage complex and voluminous data.

ITASCA's key features include support for long-duration transactions, shared and private databases, distributed version control, extensible architecture and dynamic schema modification. The system's active data structure (dynamic schema) makes it easy to restructure data while the system is running. By comparison, if data is warehoused in relational tables, users are denied access to the information while modifications are being compiled.

"The ITASCA system enables companies to create and re-use knowledge more easily," explains Ibex CEO and President, Dr. Cheryl Gerelle. "Because it's based on Allegro CL's Dynamic Objects technology, it has the flexibility to change and adapt without downtime. For our clients, this has been critical."

The ITASCA OODBMS reduces maintenance time and expense for immediate and direct increases in corporate resource efficiency in a variety of industry contexts. One customer, Odense Lindo, is a large Danish ship-building operation. Odense Lindo uses ITASCA object technology to integrate legacy systems and diverse data sources including large, complex CAD applications.

"Dynamic schema modification was extremely useful for us," notes Gunnar Schoenfeldt of Odense Lindo's Promos Project Team, "...We made a preliminary integration first, to let people start making applications. As they began developing, they would ask, 'hey, we want another attribute in this class - can you make it?' And they found it very nice that we didn't have to bring down the system or take off the data to make the modification."

In other end-uses, ITASCA responds to high-end requirements for speed and scalability using active object-oriented databases to manage complex data for:

• Large-scale multimedia management (eg. video on demand)
• High volume web content management (web browser interface is available)
• Geographic information systems
• Data mining and warehousing
• Engineering project management

Mission-critical applications that must handle highly complex problems, such as the ITASCA object-oriented database from Ibex Object Systems, rely on the power and flexibility of dynamic object-oriented programming. Allegro CL, the leading Dyanamic Objects programming environment from Franz Inc., provides the dynamic language and programming tools that software developers need to build applications that can successfully manage complexity.

For more information on Ibex Object Systems and ITASCA, please visit www.ibex.ch.