Ann Rockley has a post on CMSWatch re: the X-Hive acquisition. This makes me wonder if this is not really in response to two things –
- Success of products like MarkLogic and others in implementing pure XML repositories
- The complexity of emulating XML/XPath/xquery capability in old school architectures.
Whether EMC folds X-Hive capabilities into its existing CMA software products will tell us a great deal about the future of the unified platform.
Lee Dallas
Marko Sillanpää
Oh come on, what makes you think that they even care about Marklogic? These guys have been around since 2001, and who are their customers? Mostly publishing companies and of course they are going to use XML. For them their life blood is about repurposing content. But it’s not the author that’s writing XML it’s someone whose job re-formatting the content for XML storage. I’d really be surprise if it’s more than paragraphs and titles that are being represented as elements.
I agree there strength to XML but it’s really not being adopted across organizations. Just because Microsoft now saves Office documents as XML doesn’t mean XML is being used the way it was intended. To really use XML it’s about understanding the context of the message and not just the formatting. What we’re really seeing is XML being used more like SGML (remember that technology). The other use of course for XML is data exchange and that’s why I think EMC bought.
XHIVE/DB is the answer. Let’s look at one of their mainstream competitors and three of EMC up and coming competitors in content management. What do they have in common? IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Alfresco all include databases in their suites. Every time someone buys a seat of Documentum they also need a seat of either Oracle or SQL Server. A database inside Documentum lets them get away from having to sell seats for their competitors.
I always thought that it was a mistake for Oracle or Microsoft to try and build their way into this space. It was too late to enter on a build plan. At least Oracle saw the light after 8 years of trying and bought Stellant. As for Microsoft, after launching SharePoint in 1999 maybe their third architectural attempt is a charm.