Ingres, rPath detail software appliance

Ingres intends on Tuesday to provide more details about its upcoming software appliance, a tight coupling of its open-source database with rPath's Linux distribution that is designed to simplify system maintenance.

Wrapping the Ingres database with only the operating system functionality necessary to run the database should allow users to update and patch their database and operating system at the same time, treating the software combination as a single maintenance unit, according to Ingres Chief Technology Officer Dave Dargo.

Due to become generally available by year-end, the software appliance is currently at the proof-of-concept stage and is in the hands of a couple of customers, Dargo said. Following its debut at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco this week, Ingres plans to make the offering more widely available for download later this year. Previously known as Ingres Software Appliance, the company Tuesday rechristened the work, Project Icebreaker.

The Icebreaker name reflects both Ingres' desire to kickstart discussion around a potential new model for software maintenance as well as "break the logjam" proprietary software vendors like Microsoft and Oracle currently have on maintenance, Dargo said. Microsoft, which effectively sells customers a software stack of operating system, applications and database, doesn't provide integrated support, but separate maintenance for each of its different products, he added.

Project Icebreaker is also the first major new software from Ingres, a database and middleware tools provider. Before its reinvention as an open-source player in 2004 and its subsequent spin-off from CA Inc. in 2005, Ingres was a closed-source software vendor for decades.

Ingres and rPath begun work on Project Icebreaker five months ago. Project Icebreaker will feature around 35 percent of the rPath Linux distribution's components, equivalent to 15 percent of the operating system's size, said Erik Troan, cofounder and CTO of rPath. "Reducing the size of the system reduces the surface area for security attacks," he added.

RPath specializes in working with independent software vendors to build Linux software appliances using its rBuilder tools and rPath Linux. Last month, rPath announced a partnership with open-source telephony company Digium Inc. to include its Linux with Digium's Asterisk Business Edition private branch exchange (PBX).

Ingres is hoping that third-party software vendors will want to build on top of the Project Icebreaker framework to create their own appliances to act as e-mail servers and configuration management databases, Dargo said.

Ingres has yet to settle on a final name for Project Icebreaker and is polling customers on their preference, Dargo said. At present, users are split between those who like the software appliance tag, feeling it describes the software perfectly, and those who think the word "appliance" is more suitable for computer hardware, he added.