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SOLID HAS THE SOLUTION


SOLID Server provides robust transaction processing power combined with cost-effective distribution in high volumes. The following chapters introduce the unique features that make SOLID Server the right data management solution for modern applications.

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SOLID Server provides a unique combination of robust transaction processing power and cost-effective distribution in high volumes. Load a free evaluation copy from SOLID Online Services: http://www.solidtech.com

With legacy technology, features and power are achieved by compromising care-free and compact design; those products cannot be embedded in high-volume applications.

Simple database packages developed for PCs and small LANs may be compact and easy to deploy, but they do not provide the scalability, performance, and robustness needed for mission-critical applications.

High Volume Component

Cost-effective Deployment

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Installation of SOLID Server typically takes just a few minutes. No special skills are needed, just a simple installation program and two or three diskettes. SOLID Server can be deployed easily also through Internet connections. It is easily embedded into application packages and provides advanced licensing options.

Ease of Use

In modern decentralized and mobile solutions, the database server's ease of use is increasingly important. SOLID Server runs continuously and automatically performs all administrative tasks such as backup and checkpoint creation. Naturally, SOLID Server recovers automatically from system failures.

Reduced Administration Costs

In a typical client/server configuration, the long-term costs are mainly personnel costs. Gartner Group estimates that personnel costs, such as administration and end-user support, account for as much as 85% of the 5-year costs of a project deploying client/server technology. SOLID Server is specifically designed to reduce these costs. No heavily trained database administrators are needed.

Small Footprint and Scalability

The central memory and disk space requirements for SOLID Server are very modest. It runs on hardware from small mobile devices to heavy-weight multiprocessing environments.

Most databases get slow as they grow. With SOLID Server, active new data is separated from older, more stable data. The small active index — the unique Bonsai TreeTM — stores new data in the central memory. More stable data is maintained in the storage server. The fast and efficient Bonsai Tree provides conflict detection and a consistent view of data and ensures optimal performance also with very large databases.

Reduced Hardware Costs

In a smaller system, no dedicated database server is needed. But no matter how large a system is built, SOLID Server stays lean and mean. It needs less hardware than comparable databases to provide similar performance.

Open Component

SOLID Server

Portability

SOLID Server is designed for optimum portability. It supports all major operating systems, networks, and communication protocols and stores the data in the same binary format across platforms. A uniform SQL API facilitates the development of portable client applications. These features together enable you to easily provide multi-platform solutions.

Migrating from one operating environment to another is the easiest in the DBMS market: database files are binary compatible between operating system environments. This means that a database created and used, for example, in a single-user Windows environment can be copied directly into any other supported environment, where it can be used immediately by the corresponding SOLID Server process.

Standards

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Information technology is changing so fast that today's system — no matter how advanced — can be tomorrow's dinosaur. The best way to protect a software investment is to invest in a standard system. SOLID Server is designed in compliance with all relevant SQL standards: ANSI SQL2, Microsoft ODBC, and SQL Access Group CLI. Strict adherence to standards means that our partners are not tied to any particular hardware, development tools, or system software.

The bottom line is that if you are satisfied with SOLID Server, you can expand the system as needed. If for some reason SOLID Server does not meet your expectations, you are free to adopt another DBMS solution without sacrificing your investments in applications or in IT infrastructure.

Industrial Strength Component

SOLID Server is powerful and complete. It provides the robustness and functionality that professionals expect to find in an industrial-strength database server.

Reliability

The reliability of a database is typically its most valued characteristic. The modern client/server database server should provide the same level of security and integrity that mainframes traditionally offered. The reliability features of SOLID Server include:

Scalability

Scalability is one of the cornerstones SOLID Server was designed and built on. SOLID Server offers the same database technology and the same ease of use on a wide variety of platforms ranging small mobile devices to heavy-weight multiprocessing environments.

SOLID Server is the first product in the RDBMS market to provide an efficient solution for all of the following application environments:

Personal Databases

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SOLID Server has extraordinarily modest minimum hardware requirements. The small footprint enables SOLID Server to be embedded easily into personal and mobile solutions. All the features of SOLID Server including full SQL standards conformance, advanced transaction management, and recovery are also available in desktop or mobile device environments.

Workgroup Servers

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In workgroup server configurations, SOLID Server can be used in various Intel-based operating environments.

Due to efficient loading and indexing operations, SOLID Server is also well suited for decision-support systems, where large amounts of data are repeatedly moved from the enterprise server to a local server for further analysis.

Furthermore, SOLID Server’s ease of use is an important consideration for workgroup database servers. More and more workgroup applications are running in LAN environments where usually no trained database administration personnel is available.

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Enterprise-wide Solutions

SOLID Server is an industrial-strength DBMS allowing scalability all the way to powerful multiprocessor platforms. There are no limits to the number of tables, attributes, rows, keys, or key parts. SOLID Server supports variable length data and BLObs up to 2 GB. The maximum database size is over 30 TB. The SOLID product suite also includes tools for integrating mobile computing into corporate information technology using the three-tier client/server architecture paradigm. Additionally, SOLID Server is well suited for implementing Internet and intranet solutions.

Unique Transaction Management Power

Optimistic Concurrency Control

SOLID Server separates active data from older, more stable data. The small active index — the unique Bonsai Tree — stores new data by maintaining multiversion information with time dimensions. More stable data is stored in the storage server.

Because of the time dimension of the Bonsai Tree, each transaction has its own consistent view of the database — this makes locking unnecessary. When the transaction commits, SOLID Server checks that no conflicting operations were made to the small and efficient main memory Bonsai Tree by simultaneous transactions.

Row-level Locking

However, there are situations when pessimistic concurrency control (locking) is more appropriate. For example, in some applications there are small areas that are very frequently updated. In the case of these so-called ‘hot spots’, conflicts are so probable that optimistic concurrency control wastes effort in rolling back conflicting transactions.

The Unique Combination

SOLID Server provides a unique combination of traditional row-level locking and advanced optimistic concurrency control. Row-level locking can be turned on table by table, and a single transaction can use both concurrency control methods simultaneously. All this functionality, supported for both read-only and read-write transactions, can be used within the ANSI standard SQL syntax without any proprietary extensions.

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The unique SOLID Bonsai Tree offers optimistic multiversion concurrency control It never causes operations to wait for locks. It offers better performance for the majority of applications. No effort is wasted in maintaining locks and in deadlock resolution algorithms.

Synchronization

For mobile and distributed solutions, SOLID Synchronizer addresses the major issues related to bi-directional data synchronization. It is based on a few concepts that maintain the simplicity, robustness, and performance of the overall business system.

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Master and Replica Databases

The master database always contains the official version of the data. For each data item, i.e., row of a table, there can be only one master version. All other versions of the same data are replicas.

The replica database is a subset or a full set of the master database. It contains a tentative version of the data. In addition to the data, it contains transactions that need to be committed later in the master database.

Database Synchronization

Database synchronization is a process after which the contents of the master and replica databases are equal. The synchronization process is always carried out between two databases of which one acts as a master database and the other as a replica database. The synchronization process contains two major parts: data replication and transaction propagation.

Publications and Subscriptions

A publication is a subset of the master database that propagates out to replicas. Replica databases use subscriptions to request publications. After the replica database has received the initial full publication, only publication updates that contain the latest modifications need to be sent to the replica.

Intelligent Transactions

In real-life business applications, the business logic is vital for proper conflict detection in data synchronization. Only in the most simple applications just transferring the data is adequate.

In order to address this problem and avoid the issues that arise from the trigger based conflict resolution approach, Solid introduces a concept of intelligent transactions. An intelligent transaction contains not only the transaction itself, but also the validation and error handling logic that is needed to ensure master data validity and integrity.

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