OpenLink Software
Encyclopedia
Founded in 1992, OpenLink Software, Inc., is a software company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts
, USA.
The company develops and deploys standards-compliant middleware
products that cover:
OpenLink Software is creator and owner of the Universal Data Access drivers suite
(comprising OpenLink ODBC Drivers
, OpenLink JDBC Drivers, OpenLink OLE-DB Providers,
OpenLink ADO.NET Providers, and OpenLink XMLA Providers); the Virtuoso Universal Server
;
the iODBC
driver manager; the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit
for RIA
development; OpenLink Data Spaces; and other leading-edge middleware products.
With approximately 50 employees spread over 7 countries and 4 continents (figures from September 2007), OpenLink Software
products are used by enterprises of all sizes from sole proprietorships to Fortune 100 companies. The company's products are in use in
over 10,000 production deployments worldwide.
OpenLink Software revenues derive from selling support, consulting services, and training for their open-source products,
as well as licensing fees for their closed-source and dual licensed
products.
As an example: OpenLink Software makes the Virtuoso Universal Server (Open Source Edition) available under
the GPL
at no charge and also sells it under other 'more traditional' licenses to
clients who do not find the GPL suitable for their purposes (such as inclusion of OpenLink Software technology
in a closed source product).
Other sources of revenue for OpenLink Software include providing support and consulting as well as training and
certification for the Virtuoso Universal Server and their Universal Data Access drivers. OpenLink Software products
are also embedded in products by other companies including: Apple, Avaya
, Lucent, Sungard Bi-Tech, North Plains Systems, Open Text
, and others.
Burlington, Massachusetts
Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 24,498 at the 2010 census.- History :It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, however this has never been confirmed....
, USA.
The company develops and deploys standards-compliant middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
products that cover:
- Transparent access to SQLSQLSQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
data sources via ODBC and JDBC drivers, and OLE-DB, ADO.NETADO.NETADO.NET is a set of computer software components that programmers can use to access data and data services. It is a part of the base class library that is included with the Microsoft .NET Framework. It is commonly used by programmers to access and modify data stored in relational database systems,...
, and XMLA data providers; - Enterprise Data IntegrationEnterprise Information IntegrationEnterprise Information Integration , is a process of information integration, using data abstraction to provide a unified interface for viewing all the data within an organization, and a single set of structures and naming conventions to represent this data; the goal of EII is to get a large set of...
of heterogeneous SQLSQLSQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
and XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
and RDFResource Description FrameworkThe Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
data sources; - Web Services Composition and Deployment;
- Business Process ManagementBusiness process managementBusiness process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
and Integration.
OpenLink Software is creator and owner of the Universal Data Access drivers suite
(comprising OpenLink ODBC Drivers
OpenLink ODBC Drivers
High-performance, standards-compliant data access drivers, the'were arguably the first ODBC driver implementation availablefor non-Windows platforms such as Unix-like environments.OpenLink has continued to innovate in their drivers with the...
, OpenLink JDBC Drivers, OpenLink OLE-DB Providers,
OpenLink ADO.NET Providers, and OpenLink XMLA Providers); the Virtuoso Universal Server
Virtuoso Universal Server
Virtuoso Universal Server is a middleware and database engine hybrid that combines the functionality of a traditional RDBMS, ORDBMS, virtual database, RDF, XML, free-text, web application server and file server functionality in a single system...
;
the iODBC
IODBC
iODBC is an open source initiative managed by OpenLink Software. It is a platform-independent ODBC SDK and runtime offering that enables the development of ODBC-compliant applications and drivers outside the Windows platform...
driver manager; the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit
OpenLink AJAX Toolkit
OpenLink AJAX Toolkit is a JavaScript-based toolkit for browser-independent Rich Internet Application development. It includes a rich collection of UI Widgets/Controls, Event Management System, and a truly platform independent Data Access Layer called AJAX Database Connectivity...
for RIA
Rich Internet application
A Rich Internet Application is a Web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software, typically delivered either by way of a site-specific browser, via a browser plug-in, independent sandboxes, extensive use of JavaScript, or virtual machines...
development; OpenLink Data Spaces; and other leading-edge middleware products.
With approximately 50 employees spread over 7 countries and 4 continents (figures from September 2007), OpenLink Software
products are used by enterprises of all sizes from sole proprietorships to Fortune 100 companies. The company's products are in use in
over 10,000 production deployments worldwide.
OpenLink Software revenues derive from selling support, consulting services, and training for their open-source products,
as well as licensing fees for their closed-source and dual licensed
Dual license
Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g...
products.
As an example: OpenLink Software makes the Virtuoso Universal Server (Open Source Edition) available under
the GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
at no charge and also sells it under other 'more traditional' licenses to
clients who do not find the GPL suitable for their purposes (such as inclusion of OpenLink Software technology
in a closed source product).
Other sources of revenue for OpenLink Software include providing support and consulting as well as training and
certification for the Virtuoso Universal Server and their Universal Data Access drivers. OpenLink Software products
are also embedded in products by other companies including: Apple, Avaya
Avaya
Avaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
, Lucent, Sungard Bi-Tech, North Plains Systems, Open Text
Open text
In semiotic analysis, an open text is a text that allows multiple or mediated interpretation by the readers. In contrast, a closed text leads the reader to one intended interpretation....
, and others.
History
- 1992 Company founded (as PAL Consulting) by Kingsley IdehenKingsley IdehenKingsley Uyi Idehen is Founder, President, and CEO of OpenLink Software, a privately held company founded in 1992. Born in Manchester, England in 1965, of Nigerian heritage, Idehen was raised in both Great Britain and Nigeria. In the mid 1990s, he relocated to the USA, where OpenLink is now...
- 1993 Shipped first ODBC functionality on non-Windows platforms,
Universal DataBase Connectivity (UDBC);
name changed to OpenLink Software - 1995 Shipped iODBCIODBCiODBC is an open source initiative managed by OpenLink Software. It is a platform-independent ODBC SDK and runtime offering that enables the development of ODBC-compliant applications and drivers outside the Windows platform...
, the first ODBC Driver Manager
for non-Windows platforms - 1998 Acquired full rights to Kubl, which evolved into the
Virtuoso Universal ServerVirtuoso Universal ServerVirtuoso Universal Server is a middleware and database engine hybrid that combines the functionality of a traditional RDBMS, ORDBMS, virtual database, RDF, XML, free-text, web application server and file server functionality in a single system...
; Orri Erling joined staff - 1998 Shipped Virtuoso 1.0, including Virtual Database / Federated DatabaseFederated database systemA federated database system is a type of meta-database management system , which transparently integrates multiple autonomous database systems into a single federated database. The constituent databases are interconnected via a computer network and may be geographically decentralized...
/ Hybrid Data Sever Functionality - 2000 Shipped Virtuoso 1.5, adding a ValidatingXML ValidationXML validation is the process of checking a document written in XML to confirm that it is both "well-formed" and also "valid" in that it follows a defined structure. A "well-formed" document follows the basic syntactic rules of XML, which are the same for all XML documents...
XML Parser (supporting XML Schema),
XSLTXSLTXSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...
processor, SQL-to-XML transformation, XQueryXQuery- Features :XQuery provides the means to extract and manipulate data from XML documents or any data source that can be viewed as XML, such as relational databases or office documents....
, XPathXPathXPath is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document. In addition, XPath may be used to compute values from the content of an XML document...
, WebDAVWebDAVWeb-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...
support, and a native XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
datatype - 2001 Shipped Virtuoso 2.0, adding
- Execution of native or third party SQLSQLSQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
Stored Procedures over HTTP - Execution of native or third party SQL Stored ProceduresStored procedureA stored procedure is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational database system. A stored procedure is actually stored in the database data dictionary.Typical uses for stored procedures include data validation or access control mechanisms...
via SOAP (by publishing
SQL Stored Procedures as WSDLWeb Services Description LanguageThe Web Services Description Language is an XML-based language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a Web service. A WSDL description of a web service provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects and what data structures...
and SOAPSOAPSOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...
compliant Web ServicesWeb serviceA Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
) - Proxy Generation for third party Web Services
- Exposure of saved SQL, SQL-to-XML, XQuery, and XPath queries as Web Services
- Execution of native or third party SQL
- 2001 Shipped Virtuoso 3.0, adding
- DBMS hosting of the Java, Microsoft .NET CLR, and MonoMono (software)Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
runtime environments - User Defined TypesObject compositionIn computer science, object composition is a way to combine simple objects or data types into more complex ones...
(UDT) support with implementation in SQL, Java or .NET - Use of UDTs for abstracting web services, generating a UDT from a WSDL.
- SQL Stored Procedures extensibility via code associated with hosted runtimes
- Dynamic Language & Web page hosting for PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
, ASP.NETASP.NETASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...
, JSP, Python, PerlPerlPerl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, and Ruby (a recent addition) - Procedure Views (Table Valued Functions in SQL Server and Table Functions in Oracle)
- Improved Cost based Distributed Query Optimizer for handling heterogeneous SQL joins
- Bi-Directional Transaction Replication
- XAX/Open XAIn computing, the XA standard is a specification by The Open Group for distributed transaction processing . It describes the interface between the global transaction manager and the local resource manager...
-based 2-Phase Commit for Distributed Transactions
- DBMS hosting of the Java, Microsoft .NET CLR, and Mono
- 2006 Shipped OpenLink Data Spaces 1.0, incorporating
- Web Application Framework
- Weblog Publishing Platform
- RSSRSS-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
/AtomAtomThe atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...
/RDFResource Description FrameworkThe Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
Feed Aggregator - Photo Sharing system
- Discussion Server
- WikiWikiA wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
Engine - BPEL Process Manager (application layer above the in-built BPEL core)
- Unified Storage (that includes automatic metadata extraction and resource classification using RDFS and OWL)
- Social Networking Framework
- 2006 Shipped Virtuoso 4.0, forking Open SourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
(no Virtual DBMS
features) and Closed Source (including VDBMS features) editions - 2006 Shipped OpenLink ODBC Adapter for Ruby on Rails / Active RecordOpenLink Rails ODBC AdapterThe OpenLink Ruby on Rails ODBC Adapter is a nativeRuby on Rails adapter providing transparent and consistent accessto the Rails ActiveRecord Framework library.The OpenLink Ruby on Rails ODBC Adapter is released as free,...
- 2006 Shipped OpenLink AJAX Toolkit 1.0
- 2007 Shipped Virtuoso 4.5, adding --
- RDFResource Description FrameworkThe Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
Mapping of relational data. - Bitmap indexBitmap IndexA bitmap index is a special kind of database index that uses bitmaps.Bitmap indexes have traditionally been considered to work well for data such as gender, which has a small number of distinct values, for example male and female, but many occurrences of those values. This would happen if, for...
support - Engine enhancements including automatic background compaction, better SMP behavior with shorter
critical sections, fixes in transaction logic and more.
- RDF
- 2007 Shipped Virtuoso 5.0, adding --
- Full Text Indexing of Literal Objects in SPARQL Queries (this includes the magic predicate "bif:contains")
- Subclass and Subproperty Support (InferencingDescription logicDescription logic is a family of formal knowledge representation languages. It is more expressive than propositional logic but has more efficient decision problems than first-order predicate logic....
) - SPARQLSPARQLSPARQL is an RDF query language; its name is an acronym that stands for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. It was made a standard by the RDF Data Access Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium, and considered as one of the key technologies of semantic web...
Aggregate FunctionsAggregate functionIn computer science, an aggregate function is a function where the values of multiple rows are grouped together as input on certain criteria to form a single value of more significant meaning or measurement such as a set, a bag or a list.... - SPARULSPARULSPARUL, or SPARQL/Update, is an extension to the SPARQL query language that provides the ability to add, update, and delete RDF data held within a triple store...
support (SPARQL Inserts, Updates, and Deletions) - SPARQL Endpoint ("/sparql") is equipped with in-built RDF Middleware that enables non-RDF Data Sources
(e.g., (XXHTMLXHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
)HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
Pages, MicroformatMicroformatA microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup which seeks to re-use existing HTML/XHTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes in web pages and other contexts that support HTML, such as RSS...
s embedded in (X)HTML, and Web Services [e.g., Googlebase, Flickr,
Del.icio.us and others]) to be treated as bona fide SPARQL Graph URIs - Improved Support of XML Schema Type System
- Enhanced SPARQL to Relational Mapping (RDF VIEWs of SQL Data)