Are there any metadata repositories left? Is the market extinct? No, not really ... read on.
Advantage Repository
The Brownstone/Reltech products were purchased by Platinum and re-branded into the Platinum Repository. Platinum was in turn purchased by CA and the product renamed to the Advantage Repository. There are still two versions, one for OS/390, the other for distributed systems. Their code bases have not been reconciled, and their scanner portfolios are disparate (you can get scanners for one you can't get for the other). I've been monitoring them on and off for the past few years, and they appear technologically moribund (the last scanner released was for Java, and they do not support XMI that I can see), but they are definitely part of CA's supported portfolio. Version 4.0 of the OS/390 repository was just released this year, so there is some ongoing investment, and a quick Google search also shows user groups & newsletters.
Rochade
Rochade is also still in business, and flush enough to have a booth at the last two national DAMA meetings. They support the OMG Common Warehouse Metamodel, but not MOF more generally, so they are a bit behind Adaptive and MetaMatrix.
Metamatrix
They have a tool called the MetaBase, which appears to be a fully MOF-compliant repository. Their direction has been more in the enterprise information integration (EII) space, and they have had less of a story for enterprise architecture and configuration management.
Adaptive
Adaptive provides a framework that can instantiate any OMG metamodel, so you start with a massive portfolio of very well thought out information models for metadata. This is a huge win, as metadata modeling is really hard (too many shops try to do it on their own).
Adaptive has built an application on top of this framework called the Information Technology Portfolio Manager that is the start of what I'd call a complete configuration/metadata management solution. (I can't call it ERP for IT yet, because it doesn't handle financials.) This functional solution exposes maybe 1% of the underlying OMG semantics, and then they give you a powerful SDK so you can dig into any other part of OMG land you want. There is also an impressive visualization module based on SVG that is very configurable.
The primary development investment one makes with Adaptive is getting people up to speed with XSLT, a little JSP, and then just understanding the SDK, which is nontrivial. The other commitment is that your people have to drink very deeply of the OMG Kool-aid.
Informatica
Perhaps the biggest news in the repository market is the release of Informatica's Superglue. While still essentially beta 0.9 software, Informatica's strong financial position makes this the product for the others to beat. It is CWM compliant at least, and apparently Informatica has chosen to build it on a full MOF framework. Their commitment to exposing the other OMG models is up in the air.
You might also consider adding the Agilense.com EA WebModeler, a VAR of the Inspired.org Archi KM Toolkit technology. They both appear to support and possibly leverage MOF, MDA (UML and CWM via XMI), and CIM/WBEM, and SPEM.
Agilense did try to add their capabilities to the Adaptive technology, but it was apparently too expensive for the market. WebModeler is much simpler to learn, use, and acquire.
Roy Roebuck
Independent Enterprise Engineer
One World Information System
703-598-2351
Posted by: Roy Roebuck | February 24, 2004 at 05:29 AM