Advantage Database Server

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Advantage Database Server combines the power of SQL statements and its relational data access methods with the excellent performance and control of traditional navigational commands. Advantage has native development interfaces that leverage your knowledge of the most popular programming tools. Thanks to its optimized data access methodology and unmatched performance, Advantage offers data security, stability and integrity in a virtually maintenance-free environment. Advantage installs easily on your existing network infrastructure, with no specific configuration requirements.

Summary

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  • 1 Performance
  • 2 Database security
  • 3 Database stability
  • 4 Simple implementation and maintenance
  • 5 Advantage Client Solutions
  • 6 Source

performance

The high-speed database engine and client / server processing that Advantage offers you significantly reduce network traffic and improve performance. Network traffic and concurrency are prominent problems in multi-user environments where a client / server model has not been implemented. The applications that work in this environment generate high network traffic, since it is the client machines that carry out all the data processing. Advantage Database Server optimizes multi-user performance by intelligently dividing operations between client and server. The client / server architecture transfers all data management requests to the server itself where the information is stored, thus reducing network traffic dramatically.

  • High speed lock

Advantage Database Server uses an intelligent lock management system that eliminates lock retries and related network traffic. Advantage Database Server implements an internal queuing algorithm, which allows locks to be performed without requiring the API of the network operating system to be called. All blocking information is kept internally in the blocking queues. Advantage supports index lock for read and write write lock. The first mechanism greatly increases the performance of reading multi-user indexes, while the write-lock queues and the removal of retries increase the performance of the applications themselves.

  • Advantage Extended Procedures

Advantage’s expanded procedures are very easy to develop. Like traditional stored procedures, Advantage procedures allow you to execute code on the server, where the data resides. With this, you can eliminate all data-intensive tasks from client stations, and reduce network traffic to a simple send / receive operation. Unlike other management systems, you can write, store, and execute written server procedures with your preferred development tool. A database administrator is not required to develop these procedures.

  • Optimized Advantage Filters

Optimized Advantage Filters (AOF) improve filtering of databases. AOFs speed up the speed of filtering (WHERE clauses) by using high-speed indexes that segment the data. No data is read from the table if the filter condition is not satisfied, so the amount of data that is retrieved from disk is dramatically reduced and performance increases accordingly.

Database security

The database security features of Advantage Database Server allow you to ‘hide’ physical data files for any other non-Advantage application. To do this, the network administrator simply removes the access rights to the files and directories where the databases reside, so that users cannot corrupt, overwrite or delete the data files. When an Advantage application requests to open or create a data file, Advantage Database Server will open or create it on behalf of the application, regardless of network access rights. Advantage Database Server is authorized to do so since it runs on the server and in ‘supervisor’ mode. Advantage’s native security also enables determine who can access the databases and how they can modify them. Only applications created with Advantage can access databases, while any other application will not have access.

  • Flexible control of user access

Advantage Database Server offers native database security features through the creation of user accounts, which control access to tables, views and stored procedures. This access control mechanism is based on two properties of the database: the need to carry out a login and the verification of access rights. The user is verified at the time of the connection to the data dictionary and whenever she tries to access a table, view or procedure to verify her permissions. You can set individual accesses for each user, table, view or procedure, as well as create groups to facilitate the assignment of permissions.

  • Database encryption. Advantage Database Server allows you to encrypt all the information in a database. Advantage is capable of physically encrypting the logs to protect their content from unauthorized access. The encryption scheme uses a password to encrypt the data, and requires it to be able to display the original data. In this way, it is possible to ensure the privacy of your information on the network. Encryption works on both tables and memo files. Also, the data is transmitted in encrypted form over the network, so the client applications must have the correct password to be able to display the information. Advantage’s encryption system uses a standard 160-bit algorithm that guarantees the inviolability of information.

Database stability

Advantage Database Server offers great stability to the database and eliminates any possible corruption by ensuring that any operation on the database is complete or not. Orders received on the server are fully executed, regardless of the state of the workstation, network or application. Any command that is not fully received will be ignored, so with Advantage the integrity of the data and indexes only depends on the file server and not on the connected workstations or the state of the network.

  • Transaction Processing System. Advantage Database Server allows you to incorporate all the advantages of a transactional processing system (TPS) into your database applications. This system performs multiple insert, update and delete operations on any number of tables, with the assurance that all of them are executed satisfactorily or none of them occurs. In other words, Advantage’s TPS allows multiple insertions, updates and deletions to be processed as if it were a single operation. If the client station or network fails in the middle of a transaction, Advantage Database Server automatically undoes everything done to leave the database in a stable and known state. The Advantage TPS supports the transaction isolation level called Read Commited. This means that any change made by a transaction remains hidden from other users until a COMMIT statement is carried out. During the transaction, only the application that is executing it sees the changes that are being made, while for the rest of applications it is as if the transaction had not started. If the transaction (ROLLBACK) is aborted, no other user will have perceived the temporary changes that the transaction has attempted to make. Only a COMMIT statement makes them visible to other applications. while for the rest of applications it is as if the transaction had not started. If the transaction (ROLLBACK) is aborted, no other user will have perceived the temporary changes that the transaction has attempted to make. Only a COMMIT statement makes them visible to other applications. while for the rest of applications it is as if the transaction had not started. If the transaction (ROLLBACK) is aborted, no other user will have perceived the temporary changes that the transaction has attempted to make. Only a COMMIT statement makes them visible to other applications.
  • Referential integrity constraints Referential integrity constraints guarantee the validity of data and maintain relationships between the records in your databases. Advantage supports four categories of restrictions:
    • Primary and unique keys: There cannot be two records in the table with the same value for the set of key columns.
    • Referential integrity: The parent-child relationships established in the database are respected. It is the server, in this case, who implements the business rules and not the application.
    • Field level restrictions: Ensures that the data entered in each specific field of a record is validated at the logical level. Field level constraints include the minimum and maximum allowed value, if the field can be NULL, and the error message associated with checking the imposed constraint.
    • Record-level restrictions: Ensures that the data entered in the related fields of a record are logically valid before saving. The record-level constraint includes a logical expression that establishes the relationship between the fields in a record and the associated error message.

Simple implementation and maintenance

  • Full scalability. Advantage Windows applications can be distributed in individual, point-to-point, client / server and Internet environments, with the same source code. Advantage does not require a different set of components or code for each of these environments. Advantage customers are able to automatically determine if Advantage Database Server is available, if Advantage Database Server can be accessed through Advantage Internet Server, or if a connection to Advantage Local Server should be established. It is only necessary to write an application with the same source code to distribute your applications in any type of environment.
  • Tools for development and management. Advantage Data Architect is a tool designed to help you effectively develop and maintain your Advantage applications. Advantage Data Architect includes the following features:
    • Development:
      • Import and convert all types of tables (such as Paradox, dBASE, Access and SQL Server) into Advantage compatible tables.
      • Create Advantage data dictionaries and define referential integrity rules and restrictions at field and record level.
      • Create tables and indexes.
      • Change the structure of existing tables.
      • Encrypts / decrypts tables and dictionaries.
      • Build and test Advantage SQL queries using a visual query designer.
      • Generate the code to create tables and indexes automatically.
      • Setting:
        • Check the environment of the client workstation to verify the connection to Advantage Database Server.
        • Establishes access control lists to determine the access rights of users who connect to Advantage Database Server.
        • Create aliases similar to those used by the Borland Database Engine.
        • Management:
          • It offers functions to recreate indexes, and package, restructure, and repair tables.
          • Manages Advantage’s data dictionaries.
          • Monitors the activity of the Advantage Database Server.
          • Perform maintenance tasks.

Advantage Client Solutions

Current database applications can be easily migrated to Advantage Database Server. Advantage client solutions are natively and easily integrated by replacing existing database drivers with Advantage ones. Advantage client solutions are available free of charge for Borland Delphi, Borland C ++ Builder, CA-Clipper, CA-Visual Objects, Microsoft Visual Basic, Java, Visual Studio .NET, Linux, and other development environments.

  • Improved functionality in Advantage Database Server 12. Improved support for FoxPro. Advantage 12 is capable of supporting the Visual FoxPro language
  • Performance improvements:
    • Windows and Linux 64-bit servers: The Advantage Database Server has been designed to work as a natural 64-bit application on Windows and Linux servers, dramatically increasing memory usage capabilities.
    • SQL engine and filter performance improvements: The server is able to use a more efficient method to improve multi-segmented filters. Since filters are heavily used by the SQL engine, this improvement will have a positive impact on the performance of SQL reports as well.
  • Productivity improvements
    • SQL Debugger: A visual SQL debugger has been added to Advantage Data ArChitect, allowing developers to debug SQL scripts, stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions using breakpoints, and variable / call stack inspection.
    • Dynamic server configuration: If all available resources are in use, Advantage will automatically adjust to handle new requirements.
    • Event notifications: Event notifications are a mechanism that allows the server to proactively notify interested clients of an event that has taken place.
    • New default user groups: administration, public and backup.
    • TDataSet Descendant Version Management Utility – This utility allows developers to maintain multiple projects on an individual PC, even when each project uses different versions of the Advantage TDataSet Descendant.
    • Replication functionality enhancement: inclusion of pause and merge functionality

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