It's 2019 and MultiValue is Back

Kathy Larson

June 5, 2019

By John Bramley, Director MV Practice, NexusTek

We’re lucky enough to live in a world where storage is abundant. Users will never have to know the frustration of running out of space on their servers or in the cloud, nor grit their teeth at the cost of expansion. Instead, terabytes of data are about as expensive as tap water. Globally, we now generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per year.

Now, the challenge isn’t to find more storage for your critical data – the challenge is how to find your critical data. Your data contains powerful insights that will help you grow your business. Your problem is that the insight you need is buried alongside thousands of identical files. You need to find that information, retrieve it, and get it in front of your eyeballs – right now. How do you do that?

Traditional Databases Aren’t Doing the Work

The increase in the volume of overall data – especially unstructured data, which takes up to 90% of all data ever stored – has led to a decline in usability when it comes to traditional relational databases.

To be fair, relational databases are still the cornerstone of many, many important applications – and they’re also foundational in terms of computer science. The fact remains, however, that they were originally designed to be a digital repository for the contents of paper records. Data is now being stored in more complex ways. For example, a database may now include sentiment analysis from social media, photos for training image-recognition software, and logs from IoT sensors. Not only are these records more diverse, the relationships between these records are growing in importance.

Relational databases aren’t designed to surface those connections. This becomes a problem when it comes time to perform actions such as analytics, machine learning, and automation. When it comes to analytics, it is now increasingly important to surface insights as fast as possible. However, relational databases aren’t designed to expose connections between records. They also aren’t necessarily built to hold multiple kinds of data, or unstructured data. It’s possible to modify a relational database in order to perform these tasks, but the result is expensive in terms of computation, storage, and budget.

MultiValue Databases Support Modern Applications

MultiValue databases aren’t new, but they may be a better choice for newer applications. Simply put, they are a form of a NoSQL database that adds multidimensional features. Although data is still stored in tables, each field can have a list of values associated with it. This confers several advantages.

First, it becomes possible to handle complex data structures – and to incorporate new kinds of data with ease. Unlike relational databases, there’s no need to rebuild tables when adding attributes.

Second, MultiValue databases are less expensive to use and maintain. You can store and process the same amount of data while using less computational power and storage. If you want to commit to using Big Data analytics, a MultiValue database structure will let your application run faster while using less storage, CPU, and memory. With MultiValue databases, it costs less to run Big Data.

These features make MultiValue databases a top choice for companies looking to expand into new ways of doing business. If you want to take data that you’ve never looked at before, and then store and analyze it in a fast and cost-effective manner, then MultiValue databases may be right for you.

NexusTek and Rocket Software Make MultiValue Easy to Adopt and Use

Not all MultiValue implementations are created equal. Ideally, you want an implementation that can work with different kinds of data and connect easily to your existing applications. You also want an application with unimpeachable security, ease-of-use, and cloud compatibility.

Rocket Software and NexusTek make MultiValue databases easy to adopt and use. With support for modern languages such as Python, API integration, and granular automation tools, Rocket Software makes it easier for developers to pick up MultiValue databases and create stunning applications.

Meanwhile, NexusTek is a Rocket MultiValue Cloud Accredited Partner. As databases increasingly move to the cloud, NexusTek provides a safe harbor. Our cloud implementations offer security, disaster recovery, support for a wide range of uses, and streamlined transitions. If you’re interested in using MultiValue databases in the cloud, NexusTek is a great place to start.

NexusTek delivers comprehensive MultiValue support and services for AIX, Linux and Windows operating environments. For companies that operate a critical legacy MultiValue platform to support their business, NexusTek is a trusted, tenured technology partner with the nationwide footprint, infrastructure and engineering expertise to help you capitalize on the many benefits of your MultiValue system on-premise or in the cloud. NexusTek can provide the necessary advanced support for MultiValue coupled with an all-encompassing suite of cloud services, managed IT services, disaster recovery, cyber security and collaboration, which today includes support for more than 10,000 seats running on a MultiValue platform.