 Fort Washington, Pa.-based RAM Technologies Inc., an independent software vendor providing applications for healthcare claims management and back office administration, plans to incorporate version 9 of IBM's DB2 universal database into its HEALTHsuite solution.
Version 9 is the XML edition of IBM's advanced relational database. According to the company, this release maximizes data storage capabilities and improves overall system performance. According to RAM, the integration of DB2 pureXML with HEALTHsuite will provide performance improvements, and reduce development time and costs. The company stated that some examples include:
  * Supporting changes to X12 and other HIPAA standards with little or no programming because of DB2 9's support of XML schema evolution.
  * Improved performance
     o Storing claims by eliminating the need to shred the XML claim for storage in relational tables
     o Querying claims by utilizing DB2 9's optimized indexing of XML documents
     o Passing claim data to other applications by eliminating the need to retrieve the data and then publish it back into an XML format
  * Adding new functionality to HEALTHsuite by utilizing DB2 9 to integrate XML data with existing relational data
  * Reduced development time and costs associated with DB2 9 to:
     o Validate XML data
     o Publish XML data
     o Query XML data using either SQL/XML or Xquery
     o Query and integrate relational and XML data in a single query statement
