Production & Laboratory Databases & Servers

Servers can be anything from low level I/O data servers up to SQL and other types of servers.  Primary purposes of a creating server are:

• Ensure data integrity
• Compress data, make it more efficient to read and write
• Share data with multiple users

Books are written on these two topics -- so we are unlikely to add much in a single webpage. 

For example, how do you know that if you read ten values that these ten were all read on the same I/O scan and that some are not old and some new?  How do you know that the data was not altered during transmission?  With multiple clients, how do you grant access?  With tens of thousands of records how do you quickly search and return the correct records?

Communications bandwidth has always been a problem.  Engineers have developed many ways of compressing data to send more data using less bandwidth.  

We mainly use Microsoft Data Access technologies since it is used on 80% of all computers. 

In Memory Datasets & Servers

For high speed - quick access applications will require caching data in memory.  There is not time to repeatedly write and read from the disk.  Methods of doing is are:

• Arrays
• Structures
• Objects
• ADO.NET datatables

Quick and Dirty Data that has to be saved

The best example are configuration files and settings data.  Some people will use the registry or "ini" files.  We prefer simple text or CSV files.  In some cases Excel or Access databases are used. 

Single User Databases

We typically use Excel or Access since 80% of all computer users already know how to use Excel and Access.  There are many other small database engines, including Microsoft's Data Engine (MSDE). 

Multi-User Databases

We prefer SQL Server since most computers are now Windows based.  However, we interface to many other databases using OLE DB and ODBC including Oracle, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, and most other popular database management systems. 

Database Tools

There are many tools available today to help create databases and the objects used to read and write them.  Many of the database tools are built into Microsoft's Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE).  Other tools include UML / CASE tools that can document databases and associated classes.  They help generate the Data Definition Language (DDL) along with constraints, keys, indexes, stored procedures, and triggers. 

We try to offer a fair and balanced opinion on every page of our website.  We would appreciate more information from other users to express their opinions which we will then incorporate.  If you have questions or comments please post them on our message board (see button in left hand column) so that others can read and benefit.