When is an appliance not an appliance?

I recently had an interesting discussion with Richard Hackathorn about data warehouse appliances and he convinced me that the illuminate database is an appliance in spite of the complete absence of hardware. In Data Warehouse Appliances: Evolution or Revolution?, he and Colin White describe the attributes of a DW appliance and the illuminate database aligns well with all points.

So is a software-only database really an appliance? Like so many things in the IT world, the answer is “it depends.” His article states “From the classical definition, an appliance is designed for a specific purpose.” And he defines that purpose, in the case of the DW appliance, as data management. His diagram specifically excludes Data integration services, BI applications and tools and Information delivery from the DW appliance functionality.

So when the illuminate profiling loader provides a report on incoming data quality, is that just data management or is it data integration services? Or perhaps one could call it information delivery?

A display of the extended metadata from the illuminate dictionary shows the range of values in a field, the total count of values and the count of unique values. If the field is numeric, it also shows min, max, average and standard deviation. An ordered display of all values and the associated count of occurrences is also available. Is that information delivery or possibly a BI tool?

The line between the appliance and the services is blurry. The features described above, and others, were included in the illuminate database system to facilitate data management. However, they are frequently used to assist in discovery and analytical processes. BI and data mining users can use these features to enhance their processes.

I would still call the illuminate database an appliance; it just has a few extra features. As the database becomes more aware of the context and meaning of the data it manages, these extra features will broaden until it will be nearly impossible to identify the end of the appliance and the start of related services. Another discussion on this topic a year from now will be very interesting.