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.