News
Merging of the Metadata Standards
- By Scott Bekker
- September 25, 2000
In a move
that occurred more quickly than many analysts thought, the Meta Data Coalition
(MDC) and the Object Management Group (OMG) together announced that the MDC
will merge into the OMG.
Before this week,
there were two metadata standards in the industry for data warehousing and
component-based development.
The merger
is an agreement between the big data warehouse and metadata vendors to use only
one standard so that exchange of metadata between different products and
different vendors can be done easily.
The new
single standard will be made up of parts from the two existing standards – the
OMG’s Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) and the MDC’s Open Information Model
(OIM). The MDC (www.mdcinfo.com) will be
cease its independent operations and begin work in the OMG to complete the new
single standard.
Many
analysts did not foresee this merger happening so quickly or even at all for
that matter – especially since the OMG (www.omg.org)
only adopted its CWM standard in August 2000. At that time most were pleased
that there were only two standards.
“This is
great for the industry,” says Mike Schiff director of data warehousing
strategies at Current Analysis Inc. (www.currentanalysis.com).
“This is really good news because it’s at the standards body level with the two
major proponents behind it.”
The two
proponents Schiff refers to are Oracle Corp. (www.oracle.com)
and Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com)
– Oracle was the main supporter for the CWM and the main supporter of the OIM
was Microsoft. Because of this, some analysts speculated that a merger would
not happen in their lifetime, given the less-than-cordial relations between the
two companies.
“I am really
thrilled this happened,” says Schiff. “Just to see the names Microsoft and Oracle
in the same press release is an achievement.”
–Alicia Costanza
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.