A frequent claim is that "information replaces the physical."
Computer simulations replace experiments, electronic documents replace paper,
digital photographs replace film. But with this growing reliance on bits and bytes
comes a need to manage data in more flexible ways.
In our cover story, "Seize the Data", a quartet of articles
addresses different aspects of that challenge. Each article focuses on a data management solution
that has benefited from engagements with customers. And each shows new ways in which relational
database technology (which IBM invented) can be extended to handle the growing requirements of
our digital culture.
Perhaps the most vexing issue connected with data is how to store it. As disks fill up
-- which happens more often as image and multimedia files proliferate -- data can be
offloaded to tapes and optical media. But relegating data to such tertiary storage
makes it difficult to access. In "Juggling Disks and Tapes",
Gary Taubes describes a solution that both helps determine what to offload and makes it
easier to query archived data.
A different problem confronts users who want to manage data
in files outside the database, where, in fact, most data resides.
There are good reasons not to transfer them into a database,
but at the same time there is a need to ensure consistency as
files are updates or deleted. In "Reaching Beyond the Database",
Peter Gwynne tells how a team of researchers found a way to link databases to external files.
Often, an organization's data resides on a variety of systems.
A project called Garlic allows a user to pose a complex query and, at the press of a button,
farm it out to multiple data sources. As Gwynne explains in
"Querying Data at the Source",
the data sources then use their own search engines and return the results to Garlic,
which assembles them into a "view" that answers the initial query.
In fact, efficient search techniques can spell the difference between a mass of data
and a mess of data. Sifting through mountains of images is a daunting task, especially
when one is looking for complex objects that might exhibit a changing pattern among
successive images. In "More Than Meets the Eye" , Robert Pool describes a
novel way of retrieving images based on the concept of an "information pyramid."
Elsewhere in this issue, IBM's Mark Bregman, general manager, pervasive computing,
argues that rapid access to data is the key to the future success of electronic business.
People must be able to interact with companies offering goods and services in as simple and
direct a way as possible. While PCs can serve as a portal to e-business, other, more
specialized devices offer greater convenience, Bregman maintains. In an
interview, he lays out a new model for more personal and more convenient
-- in short, more pervasive -- computing.
Upcoming issues will pursue the pervasive computing theme further.
Some of the other topics on the horizon include knowledge management, quantum computing,
Java performance improvements, display technology and the modeling of biodiversity.
