Been a while since I posted anything. Life has been real busy, and continues to be busy. Aside from getting everything in order to head to EMC World for a week, I am working on the whole ECM/SOA world of ECM 2.0. Not really changing my view, but refining it so that I can get the point across more clearly and concisely.

Meanwhile, I found a follow-up posting by Dave Kellogg of Mark Logic commenting on my previous Mark Logic post and on the long name of EMC’s latest product, EMC Documentum XML Store OEM Edition. Now I don’t really want to enter into any debates, because

1. I don’t have enough hands-on experience with either X-Hive or Mark Logic.
2. As Dave points out, it turns into a “he said/she said” kind of argument.
3. I don’t really care who wins. 🙂

I really just want people who read my blog to be aware of Dave’s latest entry. It is worth a read and is about as balanced and fair as what I hear from X-Hive people. He has three comments which I’ll very quickly address.

My Non-Rebuttal

Dave says that they only compete with 2% (very rough estimate) of EMC’s product base, so they aren’t competitors. That is playing with numbers. Try this spin…EMC offers a counter product to everyone of Mark Logic’s products. Thus, Mark Logic competes with EMC in a big way. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t times where Mark Logic can work with parts of EMC, but as a rule, they are a competitor.

Enemy? That depends on how personal you take it. Remember, EMC never told me that Mark Logic was the enemy. That was my word. EMC did throw Mark Logic’s name around whenever competitors were mentioned.

Next comes a dig at X-Hive:

Indeed, I do view MarkLogic Server and x-Hive/DB — i.e., EMC Documentum XML Store (11 syllables) — as same-category competitors. But I believe they’re both XML content servers only in the same sense that Oracle and Microsoft Access are both relational databases.

WOW! That is a slam. I didn’t think they were enemies. I think that proves my point. Whatever Dave may have meant by that comment, that pretty much closes the book on the issue.

Benchmarking

Dave does say that trading benchmark data from private evaluations is a poor idea. He offers some reasons, which I agree with in general, though maybe not in some specifics. I will say this though…EVALUATE BOTH YOURSELF!!!

There are lots of different things that you can do with XML, so play it out and see what works best. Both will give you evaluation copies. Use them and go from there. Set a minimum performance level and see if they meet it. Load them up with sample data and make sure that they still work.

Don’t forget to read their sizing documentation. That always helps give you a good idea of the relative performance levels. If they don’t have any sizing documentation, that is a bad sign. If you can’t find it, ask for it.

And when your done, pick something else entirely just to drive everyone nuts.