Illustra was a commercialized version of the Postgres object-relational database management system (DBMS) sold by Illustra Information Technologies, a company formed by Michael Stonebraker

Michael Stonebraker

Michael Ralph Stonebraker is a computer scientist specializing in database research.Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational database systems on the market today...

 and Gary Morgenthaler and several of Michael Stonebraker's current and former students including: Wei Hong, Jeff Meredith, Michael Olson, Paula Hawthorn, Jeff Anton, Cimarron Taylor and Michael Ubell. The technology's extensibility model centered on DataBlade modules that defined types and associated index methods, operators, and functions for purposes and data domains that included Web publishing, search and manipulation of text, and management of geospatial

Geospatial

Geospatial analysis is an approach to applying statistical analysis and other informational techniques to geographically based data. Such analysis employs spatial software and analytical methods with terrestrial or geographic datasets, including geographic information systems and...

 information.

The company was sold to Informix

Informix

IBM Informix is a family of relational database management system developed by IBM. It is positioned as IBM's flagship data server for online transaction processing as well as integrated solutions...

in 1997. The technology was folded into the Informix 7 OnLine product line, leading eventually to the creation of the unified Informix Universal Server (IUS) product line.

External links

• "Informix leaps to objects: Informix Universal Server promises to raise the database technology bar," by Bill Rosenblatt