| IN THE PAST FEW DECADES, DATABASE SOLUTIONS AND DATA MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS HAVE SUPPORTED AN EVER-EXPANDING RANGE OF SOLUTIONS AND TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURES.
There is no abatement to this trend. Many end-to-end Information Technology (IT) solutions in the current environment include access to the World Wide Web and integration with one or more Web sites. This broadened scope adds another layer of complexity to database solutions, while retaining the traditional issues and challenges facing database management.
There are still more factors affecting the complexity of data management in the current IT environment. From a business perspective, corporate mergers, reorganization, and increased competition complicate the contents and ownership of information and data across the organization. From a technology perspective, Web-enabled applications can be built on top of a broad mix of technology architectures, including components, objects, layers, and tiers. Some applications are designed from the ground up; others are Web-enabled after they are constructed. There is also a broad range of development tools and products that need to be integrated to provide a full database solution to an organization.
Another level of complexity involves the ever-increasing level of user expectations. With most Web-based solutions, the power of choice has clearly shifted to the user or consumer. Users expect and demand respect for their time and flawless application execution. Competing Web sites are only a mouse-click, gesture, glance, touch, or word away. This makes it imperative to design a Web site for optimal end-to-end performance and usability from the ground up. The alternative is to lose customers. |
