Fortress delivers the benefits of client/server technology
Increasing users increases the problems
As the number of application users at the site increases, the
size of the database doubles, then triples. Transaction loads
skyrocket. A remote site is added that requires access to the
home site data via a WAN. Suddenly, performance has slowed to
a crawl. The network is swamped with traffic and index corruption
becomes commonplace. When workstations or the network go down,
the database becomes corrupted.
With the addition of new users, there is a need to limit access
to key data. Database security becomes a larger issue. Performance
is declining. Accessing the database on the LAN is taking longer,
and performance of the WAN is even worse. The database is no
longer stable or secure. Users have lost their ability to do
their work in a timely manner.
Why the performance declined
With desktop database applications, the user interface, business
logic, database concurrency control, data movement, data searching,
and data manipulation are all performed on the workstation. The
file server only acts as a shared hard drive. There is no central
point of control to the data.
When a workstation needs to search for, read, write, or otherwise
access data, it must first attempt to provide database concurrency
by locking the data it needs to access. With only a few users
on the system, there is little contention for common data. However,
as the number of users at a site increases, so does database
access contention. The workstation data locking attempts will
fail more frequently on initial and subsequent attempts. Not
only does the individual application performance suffer but other
users' application performance suffers due to the additional
network traffic generated by multiple database concurrency lock
requests.
The performance problems have become a double-edged sword. The
database concurrency locking requires multiple retries and the
additional network traffic makes it tougher to make the lock
requests.
Why there is more frequent index corruption
The increased frequency of index corruption also has a simple
explanation. Every time a table record is to be updated, one
or more index files usually need to be changed to complete the
update operation. Once an update operation begins, the database
will only remain in a stable state if each and every table and
index update is completed. Each individual index update operation
requires a concurrency lock to be obtained, index page(s) to
be read and written, the index header to be read and written,
and finally an index "flush to disk" operation to occur. This
is for each and every index affected! If the workstation or network
goes down at any time during the update operation, indexes will
be corrupt, and the database will be left in an unstable state.
Fortress Database Server brings you the benefits of
client/server
A move to client/server is in order. What is needed is a product
that provides all the security and integrity benefits of client/server
and all the performance benefits that should be available in
a client/server environment-while allowing developers to keep
all their existing applications, their existing hardware, and
their years of accumulated expertise. The product that delivers
is Fortress Database Server.
Intelligent processing
Fortress Database Server provides client/server processing by
intelligently dividing processing between the client and the
server. The user interface and much of the business logic are
left to be done by the client workstation. All database concurrency
control, data movement, data searching, and data manipulation
are performed by the Fortress Database Server on the file server.
It becomes a central point of control for database access. Unlike
non-client/server desktop applications, Fortress moves shared
data processing operations to the file server where it makes
sense-where the data is stored. Only the results of the database
operation are returned to the client. The superior architecture
of Fortress leads to far better performance than non-client/server
systems.
Eliminate concurrency contention problems
Because the Fortress Database Server is the central point of
control to the database, data concurrency contention issues are
minimal. Its intelligent lock management system allows multiple
users to search through and read from shared files concurrently.
This leads to drastically improved performance in multi-user
systems. By performing all database concurrency control and data
access on the server, network traffic is reduced significantly
which also leads to drastically improved performance in multi-user
environments. Reduced network traffic not only helps LAN performance,
but it makes WAN database access feasible whereas before it was
out of the question.
Eliminate index corruption
Fortress Database Server eliminates index corruption. Table
and index updates are performed on the server. A table or index
is never passed to the client to be updated. When a table record
and the associated indexes are updated by Fortress, the update
operations do not occur until all necessary information has reached
the Fortress Database Server on the file server. Even if a workstation
or the network goes down, no index corruption will ever occur
and the database integrity will always remain intact.
Security
The Fortress Database Server can be used to provide database
security by allowing only Fortress-enabled applications to access
the database. Fortress provides further database security functionality
by allowing creation of user accounts to control access. Unauthorized
access to the database is eliminated.
Fortress Database Server is simply the
best and most cost effective client/server solution available.
It provides the performance, database integrity, and database
security expected in client/server systems without requiring
application re-write, new hardware or loss of existing expertise.
