BEA today announced the availability of BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic, a new product that provides reusable, real-time, integrated views of enterprise info from any data source: databases, XML files, Web app, integration adapters, etc. Liquid Data can be thought of as a tool that provides a 'virtual data warehouse' that aggregates information from inside and outside large organizations.

Read BEA's Liquid dips deeper into data pool (CNET) and the press release.

Check out BEA Liquid Data.


From BEA's site:
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The primary technology behind BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic is XQuery, an XML-based query technology. XQuery is designed to allow BEA Liquid Data to query multiple, disparate data sources across an enterprise and return XML results. Key features to BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic include:

-Real-time universal data access allows businesses to retrieve data from legacy and Web applications, databases, integration adapters, flat files, XML files and more;

-Ability to leverage corporate assets through reusable and flexible data views by different applications to help businesses adapt to changing requirements;

-Investment protection by leveraging a standards-based solution built on J2EE, Web services and XML;

-Highly optimized real-time data access and data processing inside and outside firewalls, regardless of source location, format, or type, designed to increase developer productivity.

Doesn't BEA Weblogic Integration Server pull together data from disparate sources, and allow you to output XML if you wish?

Is this a re-packaging of similar technology for different target customers, perhaps those that don't need the workflow components?

Liquid Data is implementation of XQuery by BEA (Liquid Data Server is a WebLogic Server application). Whether you need XQuery? In this article "XQuery: Reinventing the Wheel?" http://www.xmlportfolio.com/xquery.html the author consider XQuery and XSLT as very close and sometime identical technologies -- <q>tremendous amount of overlap</q>. I personally prefer XSLT and waits for reliable XSLT 2.0 implementation. As you know XSLT 2.0 introduces grouping and multiple output documents along with other nice features. The latest Saxon 7.2 is "an experimental (and incomplete) implementation of the XSLT 2.0" and AFAIK Xerces does not implement XSLT 2.0 yet.

What does XQuery have that XSLT 2.0 does not?

To my understanding XQuery is a language to query "XML databases" efficiently. That's at least what I read somewhere.

One way to look at liquid data is that it complements procedural data aggregation(i.e. WLI) with a more declarative approach (e.g. SQL and PLSQL).

XQuery has performance and ease-of-use advantages over XSLT.

Matt