DATABASE Pervasive PSQL — The Right Decision A Pervasive Software White Paper May 2006 Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . 3 FINDING VALUE IN THE RIGHT DATABASE SOLUTION . 3 RELIABLE, LOW MAINTENEANCE SOLUTIONS . 3 VARIETY OF DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS . 3 DATA ACCESS AND RECOVERABILITY . 4 COMPARING DATABASES. 4 PERFORMANCE . 4 THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS . 4 THE BTRIEVE API. 5 ADDED PERFORMANCE FEATURES. 5 EASY SETUP AND LOW MAINTENANCE . 6 KEY FEATURES OF AN EMBEDDED DATABASE SOLUTION . 6 TOOLS FOR INSTALLATION AND EMBEDDING. 6 MAINTENANCE-FREE DATABASE OPERATIONS . 7 DEVELOPMENT FLEXIBILITY . 8 PERVASIVE PSQL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER KIT . 8 PERVASIVE DEVELOPER CENTER. 9 DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY . 9 OPERATING SYSTEMS PLATFORMS . 9 CONFIGURATION AND LICENSING . 9 PERVASIVE PSQL WORKGROUP . 9 PERVASIVE PSQL SERVER . 10 DATA SECURITY AND RECOVERABILITY . 10 PERVASIVE PSQL SECURITY . 10 ADDITIONAL DATA SECURITY AND RECOVERY PRODUCTS . 10 BACKUP AGENT . 10 DATAEXCHANGE . 10 AUDITMASTER . 11 SUMMARY: THE OPTIMAL DATABASE SOLUTION . 12 CONTACT/TRADEMARK INFORMATION . 13 Pervasive PSQL — The Right Decision 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The purpose of this paper is to provide software developers and ISVs information that will assist in the process of selecting a database for packaged application customers in the small to midsized business market. These customers have many of the same concerns as enterprise database users such as security, performance, and standards support. However, there is one characteristic that sets SMB customers apart and defines many of the criteria they require for database applications – SMB customers have limited or no IT or database administration staff. Because of the lack of IT resources, databases for SMB customers must be extremely reliable and require little or no maintenance. Ideally, an embedded database is invisible to the end user – it simply installs and operates as part of the ISV application. This means that the database should include features for embedding and easy installations and upgrades, with APIs to allow for management of the database directly from the ISV application. Finally, because of the variety (and age) of computing infrastructure typical to most small businesses, the database needs to support a wide range of development and deployment choices, and be backwards compatible with several years of previous versions. FINDING VALUE IN THE RIGHT DATABASE SOLUTION When picking applications, most companies focus first on finding a solution to meet their business needs; the technology behind the application is secondary. Is the database that powers the solution important? Absolutely. The ultimate goal of a database designed for small to medium businesses is to be affordable and unobtrusive. With this goal in mind, a database must meet some basic requirements, such as speed, ease-of-use, scalability, and security. For the SMB, the ideal database delivers high performance and flexibility with the lowest possible cost of ownership. Reliable, Low Maintenance Solutions For companies without IT staff, the need for reliable, low-maintenance solutions is critical. These businesses typically rely on integrators to help install and deploy turnkey solutions. Ongoing maintenance of the application or database is often “ad hoc”, and usually involves nothing more than a scheduled backup of the data. The prices of applications targeted at small to mid-sized companies can’t support ongoing maintenance contracts, and unscheduled emergency support work can quickly turn a profitable software sale into a losing proposition for the integrator. So, in addition to low maintenance requirements, long-term reliability – uninterrupted ongoing operation of the customer application – is essential. The ideal database must be easy to install, require little to no maintenance, and never be a gating factor in a customer’s business performance, or worse, cause operations to halt. It must be simple, fast, and robust. Variety of Deployment Options In addition to simplicity, speed, and stability, end users need applications that offer a variety of deployment options, ensuring that the business has the widest latitude to leverage its application investment and that it is not locked into a potentially obsolete technology. End users also need both upward and downward scalability, with an easy way to deploy applications to larger or smaller numbers of users. Application developers need to be able to rely on the availability of industry standards and a variety of development tools and access methods to have the best chance of delivering exactly what the customer wants. Development and deployment flexibility are key ingredients to success. Pervasive PSQL — The Right Decision 3 Data Access and Recoverability Security, particularly data access and recoverability, must be planned and implemented to minimize business downtime due to data loss or corruption. Even the best application infrastructure can be the victim of either natural or man-made disasters. Businesses need to be able to secure their data by controlling access for authorized users, eliminating (or limiting) unauthorized access, and reducing the effects of security breaches when they do happen. Data backup and recovery, and file and network encryption, are all key components of a well-thought security plan. Even with a security plan in place there is still risk of damage by authorized users, either through honest mistakes or direct attacks. Businesses need a way to audit activity in the database, provide alerts for identified events, and if necessary provide an audit trail to discover what happened after the fact. Depending on the business’ regulatory environment (healthcare, for example), audit capability may even be required. Comparing Databases When comparing Pervasive PSQL (PSQL) vs. Brand X, we would suggest that you map your business criteria to the database features you need. Ask whether the database will perform as required, with minimal repair and maintenance. Once you break it down into this simple equation, you can make a logical decision. Key factors to consider are: FEATURE DESCRIPTION BENEFIT Performance The ability to perform major operations of your Faster application and more application quickly. productive customers. Easy Setup The database installs as part of the application. Easy installs and upgrades. Low Maintenance Does not require a database administrator. Minimal support expense and high customer satisfaction. Reliability Run uninterrupted for years without data Happy customers, no business corruption or application downtime. downtime, no data loss Development Flexibility Choice of languages, development environments Developer freedom of choice, and support for data access standards such as resulting in better applications. ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, and .Net. Deployment Flexibility Large number of platform, licensing, and Support wide range of clients configuration options. with single database. Scalability From single user workstations to servers with Easy to grow the application thousands of clients. with the business. Data Security and Provide multiple levels of security, with robust Keep data safe and accessible. Recoverability replication, backup and recovery tools. Pervasive Software database products are successful because they improve customer applications by being easy to embed, extremely fast, incredibly reliable, as well as calling for only minimal or no maintenance. PSQL is designed to be included as an integral and seamless part of the applications that it powers, transparent to the end user. With improved security features and the added capabilities of Pervasive Software’s other data management products for audit, data backup and recovery, PSQL provides a very secure application platform. This paper will review the features that make PSQL a success: performance, flexibility, low maintenance, easy embedding, scalability, and security. PERFORMANCE The Best of Both Worlds PSQL’s approach gives developers a unique advantage in application development: they can build applications that provide relational access where flexibility is needed and transactional access where performance is a priority. By combining a high-speed transactional interface with Pervasive PSQL — The Right Decision 4 a highly flexible and powerful relational interface in a single package, Pervasive PSQL enables developers to provide the best business solutions for their customers. • Relational access uses standard SQL query and data manipulation operations. SQL queries are broken down and analyzed by the database engine to determine the optimal method for executing the query. Relational access is best suited to ““ad hoc”” querying and user-defined reports. • Transactional access provides great performance when the database operations (and record locations) can be charted in advance and is ideal for high-volume transactions where the speed of individual I/O operations is of utmost importance. Pervasive provides transactional access through the Btrieve API. The combination of transactional and relational access enables developers to target database performance to the application’s specific requirements – standards and flexibility for areas of the application, such as reporting and ““ad hoc”” queries, that are difficult to define in advance, and exceptional performance for known (and frequently repeated) application functions. The Btrieve API The Btrieve API is the heart of Pervasive PSQL’s transactional data access. Btrieve has been in existence for over 20 years and is the underlying API for thousands of applications