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Pe WEEKNAPPLIČATION DEVELOPMENT.
APPLIED INTELLIGENCE

Access Will Be Essential for Corporations

ing workstations or personal computers

MAY 28, 190

Centralized Data

Natural-language interfaces, simple cess from a distributed network of di-

in the 1990s will
be the computer:
ization of large
corporations.

As shown in the figure, strategic sys-
tems reguired to run a corporation will
need access to data that may be distrib-
uted throughout the world on a wide va-
riety of platforms. Centralized decision:
making applications will reguire this

| data to be drawn from across the organi-

zation into a centralized repository. The
information in the central repository
may be used to support corporationwide
financial planning applications, produc-
tion-management systems and other stra-
tegically important applications.

To build these large, strategic systems,

corporations are increasingly taking an'

organizationwide view of database re-
sources and information modeling. They
, view information as a key business re-
source that must be managed properly .

;to gain strategic advantage; however, to

gain access to this information, it is nec-
essary to provide an integrated data
store and data model.

Corporationwide Data Access
'The figure illustrates a problem facing
many organizations attempting to imple-
ment an integrated data store: Through
the years, the various divisions of a cor-
poration may have committed to a wide
range of hardware and software envi:
ronments to support their different op-
erational reguirements. Manufacturing
divisions may be using Digital Eguip-
ment Corp. VAX computers in the VMS
environment for shop-floor control oper-
ations. R-and-D facilities may be using
engineering workstations and RISC ma-
chines running under a variety of Unix
Šebne Be Business-oriented ap-
ns may be operating on IBM
RTs, A8/400s and EO PE
Each of these hardware and software
environments may use a different data-
base-management system. All of these sys-
tems may have been selected as an opti-
mal solution for a local pi

in a set of convoluted statemi

Sn
luce a better interface to th

language. x

computer-aided software egineering
(CASE) tool, the user depicts the data
elements and summarizations graphical-
ly with diagrams.

Sharing Data and Models Across a Cor

of diverse systems, all of which obey an
SOL language standard.

Akin to the relational data model is
the emerging object-oriented data model,

atiori

And Around the Globe

Commitment to SRL
and AD/Cyele —
| standards allows
— different sites
to link compliant
applications
fromi different

SAA
platforms. a

New York

System/370

a nana
application

ŠoL

zam
standard ao

Operatioha!
ADICyele lata

standard z, nei
in Repository s]

datd models

Corporations view information as a key business resource. -
Providing an integrated data store and data model

— is necessary for corporationwide access to this information.

Data models implemented across
multivendor hardware platforms and
supporting server architectures will be

y important. Products such as
Oracle, Ingres and Sybase can be used to
write applications for widely diverse
hardware environments. From a corpo:
rate vantage point, it is important to
maintain commonality among these di-
Verse databases at the SOL level
Rubus the use of ANSI-standard imple-
naka of database-access products,
na a Computing tectures,
..a IBM5 SAA and Digital's Net-
vide dreja) Support (NAS) pro-
ensive support for data ac-

(
in which attributes of the data are
stored along with each data element.
Object-oriented database-management
systems will become increasingly impor-
tant in the development of advanced ar-
tificial'intelligence, expert-system and
CASE products.

Another problem facing organizations
striving to implement global information
systems is the maintenance of corpora:
tionwide data models. Each division
within a corporation should build appli-
cations using a common data model to
define entities, entity relationships, pro-
cess models and so on. In this way, appli-
cations built on Digital VAXes, engineer-

i a common l of design infor-
This is the verbs and graphical front ends are being  verse hardware platforms. a Saši a A iEIU a TE dovi Fepesiitav,
| third in a series  vsed as interfaces to SOL. With a natu- remote data access between networ 5 Ono ora to oriše om palibilty of
—of artteles-on -rablanguage interface, auerles are speci: IBM computers 15 landled via kalkajj ic a ode ane rporation 9 lo
J key industry fied in a conversational language, such generation of communication reguests NE rea epoalcry! Or/dčekii
trends affecting | as English, and then automatically using the LU 6.2 peer-to-peer communi- pe ici satibeeci by
computer hard- translated into the corresponding SOL cations protocol. Access of data from ini ei s s anenEtjoli za ma:
ware, software, statements. Likewise, the verbs used for non-IBM machines is handled through application Č mia AM
database envi-. data access in the Common Program: the automatic generation of database-ac- — chines nad ne Mea arko
ronments and ming Interface (CPI) within IBM's Sys- cess reguests using OSI protocols such For example, a o KE EaA
communication  tems Application Architecture (SAA) as the X25 packet-switching protocol. an le Gem ai,
environments. translate into SOL statements. With a These mechanisms enable data to be dis- and downloa: i; V h nei a folne
A major trend.  graphical front end, such as that of a tributed and accessed from a network ized data model tha eg

development of a specific application.
During the development process, addi-
tional entities or changes to entity rela-
tionships can be defined. Using strict
data-administration control procedures,
these changes to the local data model
can be incorporated back into the cen-
tral data model.

The AD/Cycle Standard

Among a network of IBM machines
operating under SAA, the AD/Cyele re-
pository standard can be used to main-
tain consistency of data models across
platforms. This standard defines a data
metamodel that desceribes the informa-
tion stored in the repository. For a
CASE tool, for example, it provides a

standard'definition of the information
content of a dataflow diagram, decom-
position diagram or entity-relationship
diagram. If AD/Cycle-compliant CASE
tools are used on all platforms, then
these platforms will share a common
data model for application development.

Currently, AD/Cycle is still a dream.
No vendor has yet introduced an
AD/Cyele-compatible CASE product;
however, a large number of leading
CASE vendors have committed to the
provision of AD/Cycle-compatible prod-
ucts that can be used to share design in-
formation, as defined by the data
metamodel.

AD/Cycle-compliant CASE tools are
likely to be available for a wide variety
of development platforms, including the
IBM PS/2 and RS/6000, Apollo and Sun
workstations and Digital VAXstations.

Since no CASE vendor has yet imple-
mented AD/Cycle-compliant, repositories, it
is unclear whether compliance with
ADY/Cycle will permit the integration of
CASE tools from multiple vendors. lf ap-
plication development; cannot. be coordi-
nated through AD/Cycle, then other mech-
anisms will have to be considered, such as
multiple proprietary repositories linked by
data interchange languages, such as CDIF
(CASE Data Interchange Format) or ESF

Source Format).

Next week, I will look at major trends

in communications software. H

The concepts embodied, tn this article
are described, in the High-Productivity
Technology volume in The James Mar-
tin Report Sertes. For more informa-
tion on this volume, call (617) 639-
1958. For information on seminars,
contact (in the United States and Can-
ada) Technology Transfer Institute,
741 10th St, Santa Monica, Cali f.
90402 (213) 394-8305. In Europe, con-
tact Savant, 2 New St., Carnforth,
Lancs., LA5 9BX United Kingdom
(0524) 734 505.