Cognetic Systems Unveils XQuery XML Database and Information Server

1 January 1970

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) July 19, 2006 -- Cognetic Systems today unveiled a groundbreaking XML database and information server called XQuantum™, which uses the W3C's new XQuery language for agile application development. The server supports a large subset of the XQuery standard and its full-text extensions.

The database stores information as XML, an extremely versatile storage format for complex types of information such as financials, documents, books, journals, web pages, and news feeds -- types of information ill suited for storage in relational databases.

Seven years ago the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, set out to design a radically new type of database language for XML called XQuery. Today, XQuery is ready for imminent adoption by the W3C. Many analysts believe XQuery will reshape the IT landscape as companies continue their migration to XML. Industry expert Frank Dzubeck, president Communications NetworkArchitects, Inc. predicts, "XML Databases and XQuery are set to re-engineer information storage and processing in 2006."*

XQuantum 1.0 is the culmination of a five-year R&D effort by Cognetic Systems to build an XQuery database that scales for enterprise applications. The result is an end-to-end XML content management solution that builds, stores, searches, formats, and serves information on the web and to other applications.

"Our company is the first to build an XML database that uses the web server metaphor," says company president Bill Patton. "We integrated XQuery with key Internet standards such as HTTP, HTML, URL, XML, and XSLT so that they all work together.

Entire information applications can be built by placing the usual web objects together under the server's root directory, along with XML, XSLT, and XQuery files, which are all hyperlinked together. Our innovative XQuery Server Page scripting language makes it easy to link HTML search forms to queries written in XQuery that search XML data.

The productivity gain is enormous. To demonstrate this, we ported half the NASA XML Astronomy Data Center to XQuantum in just 2 1/2 weeks. The project was done using 21 artifacts containing 2921 lines of XQuery, XSLT, HTML, and CSS source. By comparison, the original NASA project with a wider scope took 3 years." -- Dr. Ed Shaya, project lead for the NASA project, said: «Amazing that you could get this together in just a couple of weeks.»

Mr. Patton adds: "XQuantum is also ideal for use as an XML database backend in your typical multi-tier IT architecture. The types of applications it does well are ones where the content is released in batches rather than being updated continuously. The database is easy to access from almost any programming environment, because it speaks XQuery over HTTP. We included Java, C++, C#, and VB code examples to help you get started."

Information Management Productivity Firsts:

*Utility -- Industry's first dual-purpose XML database and XML content manager. It serves XML content on the web using XQuery Server Pages and XSLT style sheets. And it functions as an XML database backend for IT applications.

*Simplified administration -- Allows XML indexing without a database schema. This eliminates the huge task of defining all the elements and their data types before indexing, and you no longer need to specify which elements have indexes. In XQuantum, the database schema definition is completely optional.

*XQuantum technology -- Industry's most advanced query optimizer for XQuery brings structured query optimization to XML databases. The database generates optimal query plans for XML tree-joins, using stored data metrics allowing queries to run hundreds, or even thousands of times faster.

*XML streams -- The database returns XML streams for query results and for intermediate results whenever possible. This greatly reduces the memory footprint of the server. Streams are also used in XML parsing, user-defined functions, XML validation, XSLT style sheets, and in the HTTP transport layer.

*Static type checking -- XQuantum is the first XQuery product to implement W3C static type checking. All queries are type checked before execution. This finds type errors up front rather than in production, where they would surface randomly based on data values. The type checker formally proves that a query will work for all data values matching the declared types in the query.

*Type system -- XQuantum is the first XQuery implementation to integrate an effective type system into the XQuery language. You can declare your own XML types externally or in the query prolog and then use them in the query body. We extended the XQuery "sequence type" syntax to include "regular expression types", which can be used to validate XML content and add type information to XML values.

*Security features -- Extra security features built into XQuantum include: Protection against stack buffer overflow. Secure HTTPS communication for remote access. All access to server files and network resources is controlled through a security policy file. Remote XQuery function calls are controlled through an access control list.

XQuantum is now shipping and is priced separately for development and production use. Technical support and hands-on product training are available at additional cost. Development licenses cost $649 per developer and enterprise production licenses cost $6,595 per CPU. XQuantum runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server and on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0.

About Cognetic Systems

Cognetic Systems is an XML Information Technology company, which has been building state-of-the-art Internet software and XML databases since 1997. The company started developing its XQuery XML database product in 2001. Cognetic Systems is a privately held company founded in 1984 by Bill Patton, who is the president. The company's office is located in the Sugarloaf Corporate Center, Duluth, GA.

IT professionals wanting to learn more about industry's first web-integrated database should visit:

http://www.cogneticsystems.com/server.html

http://www.cogneticsystems.com/xquery/xquery.html

To see an XML application written in XQuery visit:

http://www.cogneticsystems.com:8080/

For more information about Cognetic Systems and its products visit:

http://www.cogneticsystems.com/

Contact information:

Bonnie Patton

Cognetic Systems, Inc.

(770) 714-8923

* NetworkWorld, 01/09/06