CIOL: How does your product support applications like DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase databases?

GK: While all the databases you mention can be categorized similarly as "enterprise-level database systems", each has extremely different characteristics and nuances, which define their individual competitive advantages.

SQL syntax is different, data dictionaries are different, utilities are different, etc. Our average customer managed 2-3 vendor platforms numbering 40-50 instances each. So we build products that maximize productivity against this level of infrastructure and the wide variances in each of the enterprise database vendor's features.

DBOptimizer again takes this theme to heart to ensure a developer or DBA can be as effective to write code and resolve SQL performance issues on all these platforms in a balanced approach. We inspire our users to feel confident in swiveling their chair as we say from one platform to the next, performing their job as effectively as if they were a dedicated professional on a single platform…a concept and job role that does not exist any longer in the enterprise.

CIOL: What is Embarcadero doing in the open source field?

GK: Open source strategies are key to Embarcadero. We play at many levels to ultimately support the open source community at large in addition to helping our customers manage their own institution of varying open source technologies.

As an example, we have attracted significant talent from the Eclipse community to work on Embarcadero products, while ensuring they have the freedom and runway to continue their great work with the Eclipse community and the OMG. We're contributing in areas such as Eclipse's E4 project and OMG's important meta-standards such the IMM and BPMN.

We're moving in a direction where we can help service other open source projects as well to guide both rapidly evolving languages such as Ruby on Rails and SQL technologies like Eclipse's DTP. We see that open source is the next wave, which is already in-flight, but of paramount interest to us is to help the enterprise to manage and support it effectively.

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