Post-relational Caché gives multimedia producer Schmidt & Wagner multi benefits
Key Benefits
- Web Technology
- Instantaneous Access
- Scalability
Social critics and pundits joke that the "WWW" in a URL really stands for "World Wide Wait." The intended humor pokes fun at the fact that Web-based, transaction-processing applications demand high levels of performance from a database that most solutions just can't deliver.
That certainly was the experience of Schmidt & Wagner, a developer of multimedia presentations and an Internet service provider (ISP) in Griesheim, a town located near Darmstadt, in Germany. Because of prior experience gained from trying to connect databases like Informix and Microsoft Access to the Internet, S & W knew that most databases were just too slow for Web-based, multimedia applications.
Then Uwe Wagner, one of S & W's principals, and Senior Developer Dieter Molketin attended a "QuickStart" workshop hosted by InterSystems Corporation. These one-day, hands-on workshops introduce developers to Caché, InterSystems' new post-relational database for complex, transaction-processing applications. Both Wagner and Molketin liked what they saw, and, without any previous Caché experience, they began delivering high-performance Web sites to their customers in only five weeks. S & W uses Caché for the database, and Caché Web technology for the interface between the application and the database.
"Performance is the most important requirement when you're working with the Web, and Caché certainly delivers on that front."
- Uwe Wagner
Principal
Schmidt & Wagner
"Performance is the most important requirement when you're working with the Web, and Caché certainly delivers on that front," said Wagner. "In the area of Web-based applications, there is absolutely no comparison between Caché and other database technologies we've used. Caché outperforms them all."
Along with performance, S & W had other requirements that made Caché attractive. "Our customers work in a very fast-paced world," explained Wagner. "They are anxious to establish a presence on the Web, so anything that saves us time is beneficial to our business. Caché and InterSystems enable us to develop and deploy applications very quickly.
"Two weeks after the "QuickStart" workshop our staff worked with an InterSystems sales engineer for one day at our offices," continues Wagner. "That is all the training we required to begin developing high-performance Web applications. Our developers found Caché very easy to learn and use. Plus, we were able to take templates from the "QuickStart" workshop and apply them in our own applications. That was a big help."
"In the area of Web-based applications, there is absolutely no comparison between Caché and other database technologies we've used."
- Uwe Wagner
Principal
Schmidt & Wagner
Caché's support of Telnet also won over S & W. "Caché lets us give our customers full control over the dynamic part of their application through direct access to the database server using ISDN/Telnet," Wagner explained. "This gives us a great advantage over our competitors who are using other databases. These other databases don't give site owners the ability to maintain and update the data on their Web site from a remote location."
Caché lets Schmidt & Wagner transform the Web's explosive popularity into rapid growth. "We are growing because of the Web," said Wagner. "But if it wasn't for Caché's attributes - performance, rapid application development and deployment, and its ability to run on PC platforms - we couldn't take advantage of the opportunity the Web offers us. Caché lets us service our clients quickly, and get a good return financially."