META DATA REPOSITORY STANDARD NEARS
By Stewart Deck

As Stewart Deck reported for ComputerWorld, Data warehouse users may be closer to a meta data repository standard that will help them tie together data from multiple systems in one place.

Judges of the meta data repository prizefight between Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. say Microsoft landed a thundering punch last week, but Oracle and some analysts say the fight is far from over.

Platinum Technology Inc. - the co-developer and exclusive porter of Microsoft's Repository - announced last week that Repository can be ported to heterogeneous operating system and data server environments including Windows NT for Oracle, Sybase Inc. and IBM DB2 systems and Sun Microsystems Inc.Solaris for Oracle and Sybase.

Microsoft's status and Platinum's position in data warehousing "bring us much closer to a de facto standard," said Craig Bell, a vice president and manager of data resource management at NationsBank Corp. in Charlotte, N.C.

Although they do similar things, "Microsoft's Repository will clearly be available for more databases, whereas Oracle's approach requires that the meta data ultimately resides in an Oracle data server," said Philip Russom, an analyst at Hurwitz Group Inc. in Framingham, Mass. Microsoft and Oracle have battled over which company's scheme - Microsoft's Open Information Model (OIM) or Oracle's Common Warehouse Meta Data - will set the standard.

After Microsoft joined the Meta Data Coalition two months ago, the standards group started integrating OIM into its specifications, and more than 60 developers now are building OIM-based applications.

"Microsoft has certainly moved ahead [of Oracle] and may have even won the repository war," said Richard Winter, an analyst at Winter Corp. in Waltham, Mass. Russom disagreed, calling the coalition "a relatively small organization with limited influence," even if it is the standards arbiter.