"Xcalia has one of the most mature implementations of these technologies on the market," said John Goodson, vice president and general manager of DataDirect Technologies, as Progress Software announced that its recent acquisition, Xcalia, a leader in the development and adoption of the SDO standard and data integration technologies, is now part of the DataDirect Technologies operating company.

"We are excited by the opportunities created by these new technologies," Goodson continued, "and are delighted to welcome the technical experts from Xcalia to our team."

Goodson today outlined DataDirect Technologies' plans to support the rapidly emerging Service Data Objects (SDO) standard within its family of data connectivity and mainframe integration products. The SDO standard, developed by a diverse group of leading technology vendors participating in the OASIS SDO working group is designed to simplify and unify the way applications use data within a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

“Along with IBM, BEA, Oracle and SAP, Xcalia has been an instrumental part of the development of SDO and DAS,” said Goodson.

“Through technology and through leadership in standards bodies, DataDirect Technologies and Xcalia have both demonstrated an unwavering commitment to innovation in data access,” said Pierre Violo, formerly chairman and chief executive officer of Xcalia. "Joining forces with DataDirect Technologies brings together the industry’s top minds, top technologies and top products in standards-based data access.”

Pierre Violo will remain with the company to assist John Goodson during the integration phase. Xcalia co-founder and chief technology officer, Eric Samson joins DataDirect Technologies, as chief technology officer of data services. Considered one of the world’s foremost experts on data access, Samson will provide technical leadership for the company’s SOA data access efforts.

SDO is a unique data access standard in that it offers applications and services participating in a SOA to access any kind of data, including relational, XML, or application-specific data objects, from various kinds of data sources in a consistent, standards-based way via synchronous or asynchronous service calls. This is a key requirement to reap the agility and reusability benefits of SOA. Too often, data access is an overlooked aspect of building a SOA until the number of applications and services accessing the data become too difficult to manage using tightly coupled connections. SDO is designed to address these problems.

“Leveraging a more holistic data integration strategy and enabling infrastructure can help enterprises better realize value from their application and SOA implementations,” states Sandra Rogers, program director, SOA, Web Services and Integration at IDC. "The ability to address consistent and optimized access and transaction support to information-based services can simplify application and process development and maintenance efforts; increase broader-based and compliant use of information; promote greater levels of reuse; and introduce capabilities to infuse information further into dynamic and real-time processes.”

As a leading independent provider of standards-based data access technologies, including ODBC and JDBCTM drivers, ADO.NET data providers and service-based mainframe connectivity, DataDirect Technologies’ support for data access via SDO standards is a logical extension of the company’s product offerings and exciting news for architects and developers. The company plans to announce new products later in the year that combine Xcalia® technologies with DataDirect® industry leading products.