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Dynix Vision - Open Systems

The first element of Horizon Open Technology is the focus on open systems. In the past, open systems meant you ran on UNIX. In other words, your application was portable across different systems. Dynix has full plans to support Horizon running natively on Oracle. This will be available in 2004.

Java

Today, open systems is much broader and much more significant. The single biggest open systems effort is Java, and it is being embraced by a very large software community. Because of that, Dynix is able to leverage the work of an entire Java community – including application servers and a significant amount of development tools. This means we don't have to spend time building the infrastructure as we move Horizon technology into the new world.

Open Source

Another key aspect of open systems is the growth in open source technology. Not all open source technology is good, but there is tremendous promise here. Operating systems (Linux), application servers (JBoss), and search engines (Lucene) are among some of the more powerful open source developments that we believe holds great promise and we intend to leverage. Dynix will leverage open source technology wherever it makes sense – to add value, streamline our development and provide economical solutions. When open source technology is at a point where it is commercially viable, this eliminates the need for Dynix to license other vendors' technologies, which costs do not need to be passed to you in the form of higher licensing fees.

One major paradigm change with Java is that it is completely an object oriented environment. While object oriented technology has been around for over a decade, the real use of it is new and Java is one of the first environment to make it mainstream (C++ was another). Being object oriented, we will be able to deliver new levels of functionality that have not been available in the library community.

Open APIs

Open systems also means that your information management system must enable easy extensions by third party vendors and libraries themselves through well-defined application programming interfaces (APIs). All of Dynix's APIs in the future will be based on XML. XML is a metadata interface, meaning that not only is the data available, but a definition of the data is included. This allows for easier integration with third party systems and adding new functionality to Dynix products. Dynix will publish all of its APIs and provided support for third party vendors and libraries to get assistance in doing integration with Horizon.

Benefits

The benefits of open systems are many. It used to be that companies had to build entire library applications from scratch. Not any more. Open Systems enables Dynix developers to spend their time focusing on building enhanced library workflow and user portals. For example, Horizon Information Portal 2.03 is built on a Java open systems platform. All future Horizon systems will be running on the same platform, leveraging our development across all applications. This will be an evolutionary process as we move forward enhancing different areas of the entire Dynix product line.

Second, Dynix will be able to bring products to market faster. Now we know you've heard this before from us and others in the industry. But here are some key reasons why we believe we will be able to do this better in the future. Today's development tools, compared with what we used to develop Horizon and Dynix ILS, are substantially easier to use. We are talking about a magnitude difference in ease of development. Also, there is a wide availability of components that can be leveraged in the Java world. For example, email notification has a been a hot topic with Horizon. There are many Java-based email components that are readily available, so that Dynix does not have to invest any resources in recreating those components or functions. Also, the nature of object oriented software is one where once a component is developed to do a specific function, that component can be leveraged over and over again without any additional development. When the component needs to be updated, it is updated in the code ONCE, not every instance it appears in the code. There is a new efficiency in development that the library community hasn't seen before.

Third, open systems are all about integration. By having OPEN and well defined XML based APIs, any library or third party library vendor will be able to enhance and expand Horizon. Dynix will go to great lengths to document all open APIs. Once these APIs are defined, they will not be changed. They may be extended and enhanced with new releases, but they will not change. This means that any enhancements made by libraries or third parties to Horizon will continue to work in future releases of the product.