Commercial database systems have been around for decades, yet data management and data access issues continue to challenge enterprise IT departments. They’re tough issues to address, because they form a moving target. Data levels are increasing, more users are being brought on board, and new systems are added to the enterprise, requiring seamless integration with existing ones. To succeed, you need a true, high-performance DBMS that has the power and functionality to address today’s demanding requirements, and the flexibility to help you quickly react to tomorrow’s.

Model 204 has a proven track record when it comes to supporting high-performance, high-volume data management solutions. The award-winning database engine is at the top of its class when it comes to query and transaction performance, making it an ideal database server for today’s new breed of applications. The application development environment helps you deploy solutions fast - and facilitates rapid refinement should your needs change in the future. Connectivity products in the Model 204 family ensure that your data and applications are accessible wherever and whenever you need them. And business intelligence tools help you understand your data, which leads to better decision-making and improved bottom-line results.

Those are the requirements of the modern agile enterprise, and that’s what you get with Model 204.

A High-Performance Database Engine for Today’s Applications

Whether you’re deploying a data warehouse, an e-business application, or a CRM system, high performance is critical to its success. With the growing number of users accessing each application, and the exponential increase in data, the performance challenge grows larger by the minute.

Time after time, Model 204 out-performs other database systems due to a variety of ground-breaking technologies. One example is bit-mapped indexing, pioneered by Rocket many years ago. Bit-mapped indexing dramatically speeds data access by eliminating the need to process long lists of records. Queries and transactions are often performed solely on the compact indexes, significantly reducing costly disk I/O.

Today, bit-mapped indexing is widely recognized as the best technology for many types of queries and transactions. Other database vendors have now introduced their own versions of bit-mapped indexing, but lack the many years of real-world experience held by Rocket.

Further contributing to Model 204’s superior performance is another breakthrough - the optimized relational model. This allows data tables that are related to each other and usually accessed together to be physically stored together, resulting once again in enhanced performance. OLTP applications are further accelerated by a number of high-volume update facilities including locking strategies and parallel updates on database partitions.

These and other key features explain why Model 204 applications are consistently recognized and honored for outstanding performance among other very large database implementations.

The Scalability to Seamlessly Support Tomorrow’s Applications

But what about maintaining high performance in the future - when your databases and applications have grown considerably? Model 204 provides the scalability options you need to continue processing at maximum speeds and without interruption.

MP/204, or Multiprocessor/204, helps you balance application workload and increase performance by offloading workload to additional processors with no changes to applications. So you don’t have to worry about performance, even in the wake of significant database growth. Rocket designed Model 204 from day-one for high-performance, high-capacity data requirements, and we remain steadfastly committed to providing cutting-edge solutions for these applications.

Realize Greater Productivity from Programmers and Users

Your total cost of investment is measured not only in software and hardware, but also in the number of hours it takes your programmers to deploy and maintain solutions. With Model 204, application development is expedited by a powerful, enterprise-scale fourth-generation language that combines data access and business process logic into a single, intuitive programming environment called User Language.

User Language is packed with features that make it fast and simple for programmers to use. The statements are easy to understand, helping first-timers produce results fast and reducing the need for excessive documentation. The procedures can then be stored in libraries, making them readily accessible to other applications or to end-users.

But business users can be productive with their data even without assistance from programmers. CCA Analytics is a visual data analysis tool that helps users query, consolidate, analyze, and create reports from the data - all in a graphical point-and-click environment. So they can get quick answers to their business questions on their own, freeing up valuable programmer time for new application initiatives.

Access Your Data Any Time, Any Where

Today’s databases need to be more than just fast and easy to access. They need to be available to all corners of the enterprise, and in many cases, to the whole world. This isn’t the easy task it once was when the enterprise IT infrastructure was simple and homogenous. Today, applications running on one platform need transparent access to data, messages, and programs residing on another - over a LAN, WAN, and the Internet.

Rocket’s Connect technology lets you take full advantage of client/server and Internet architectures by providing connectivity to Model 204 using industry-standard ODBC and JDBC. Users can run their favorite desktop business applications against server-based Model 204 data, preserving the organization’s investment in existing applications, and eliminating the need for duplicating data throughout the enterprise. Connect includes a full set of APIs that allow you to integrate Model 204 applications with Microsoft .NET framework architecture.

And as your organization moves ahead with e-business initiatives, you’ve got Java-based connectivity to the database system that was designed from the ground up to satisfy the demanding requirements that Web programmers are encountering today: the need for high performance OLTP and OLAP operations against very large databases that continue to grow.

And data isn’t the only resource that applications share today. A certain breed of application integration software makes it possible for applications to share just about any information in the form of “messages”. The leader in this market is IBM WebSphere MQ, and Rocket is among the hundreds of independent vendors who support the WebSphere MQ protocol. MQ/204 allows Model 204 applications to share messages with any other participating application on the network. So you don’t have to worry about introducing new application environments to your infrastructure that might not be compatible with existing or planned systems. Choose the best tool for each job, and enjoy instant communication among all applications with WebSphere MQ.

Summary

If you’re faced with demanding high-performance, high-capacity application requirements that the average general-purpose database just can’t satisfy, then call us. Let us show you how we’ve been providing similar solutions to customers all over the world for more than 40 years. Let us show you how to turn your organization into an agile enterprise with the Rocket Model 204 product family.