Current data management solutions are largely optimized for intra-enterprise, client-server applications. They depend on predictability, predefined structure, and universal administrative control, and cannot easily cope with change and lack of structure. However, modern ecommerce applications are dynamic, unpredictable, organic, and decentralized, and require adaptability. eXtensible Data Management (XDM) is a new approach that enables rapid development and deployment of networked, data-intensive services by providing semantically-rich, high-performance middle-tier data management, and allows heterogeneous data from different sources to be accessed in a uniform manner. Here, we discuss how middle tier extensible data management can benefit an enterprise, and present technical details and examples from the Index Fabric, an XDM engine we have implemented.
Brian F. Cooper, Neal Sample, Michael J. Franklin,