Software's Top 10 2005 Trends: #9 Data Abstraction

While abstraction has helped drive tremendous innovation and flexibility at the presentation and business logic layers, it has yet to be fully implemented in the data layer.

During 2005, the concept of “data abstraction” is likely to get increasing attention thanks to some early successes in the space, mostly from so-called Enterprise Information Integration (EII) players such as Composite Software and Metamatrix.

In the near term, the most promising space for EII appears to business intelligence and many of the major BI players have already established partnerships in the space (Cognos with Composite;  Business Objects and Hyperion with Metamatrix) however over the long term as the fundamental concepts of data abstraction and “baked in” to both application servers and development tools, data abstraction is primed to become a powerful trend that could impact the balance of power in the database industry and fundamentally change data management.

For now though , the trend is only #9 on our Top 10 list because it’s really just getting under way at this point.

For a complete list of Software's Top 10 2005 trends click here.