I'm a database kind of guy. You know, the kind that doesn't keep his address list in Outlook but rather a clustered SQL database. So when it comes to databases, I'm always for the latest and greatest!
But I've learned something after my many years at ACS and it's this. Clients don't care about databases, they care about data. Now don't get me wrong here, clients certainly care that we have a solid, reliable way of storing their data. And they want to know that it can backed up and restored if needed. But the percentage of our clients who know (or care) about how our data is stored is very small. (I should point out however that those that do know and care about it are often our larger, more vocal clients.)
So where does ACS fit in this picture. At ACS we really have two platforms. A web platform and a desktop platform. The web platform is completely SQL Server based and has been since day one. The desktop on the other hand is made up of two file based database systems that we have been using for several years.
Now the question that often comes up is "When are you going to move your desktop database to a sql database engine?". And the answer is that we have looked at this question since 1997 and have yet to find a good time or reason to do this. So are we thinking of doing it now? I don't know the answer. I do however know that our current desktop product is a very mature product that does (in most cases) 110% of what our clients need. So the value of switching the underlying database to them is almost zero. And with the value that they can get with AccessACS it seems to have become almost a non-issue for most clients. For those that do still care about it, they are often the ones that also want a complete web-interface and the benefits that come along with it. For those clients we have ACS for the Web which is an entirely web based (with a sql backend) product.
So what does the future hold for ACS and databases? That I can't answer. What I can answer is this. We will never lose sight of the value of the data however it's stored. (- Craig Baugh)
Friday, December 23, 2005
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2 comments:
Why use SQL... How about server-side processing? I realize that may not be an issue for small churches, but we have 25 workstations running ACS from the server, the file access method just creates excess network traffic as the clients read the entire contents of each table from the server to do their processing. If an SQL server can handle that processing and just send the results of a query, I would think network traffic could be reduced significantly, and thus performance.
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