Formever® is powered by Indelibase™
There is a new class of database - the Contextual Database
Forget relational databases, they’re so passé. Now there’s something new, that’s more powerful and more efficient, the Contextual Database.
Why We Need A New Approach
Why does it matter? Because having Indelibase, which is a Contextual Database, means that Formever thinks more like a person does. Instead of having to think like the machine does, and translate your logic, you can lay things out in a more "plain language" style, and Formever will follow along. This makes the system more transparent, so you can follow what it’s doing and make sure it’s what you intended.
It also means that Formever is lean and efficient, and runs quickly on regular machines, with no need for special hardware.
The Single Stack
The basic principle of Indelibase is the Single Stack. Imagine a giant – but neat – pile on your desk where every new record is added to the top. The entire database is all right there in a single stack. If it were papers on your desk this would quickly become unwieldy, but if you have the equivalent of a million digital employees inside your computer it all happens at the speed of electrons, faster than you can click your mouse.
Advantages
- Less overhead: the total size in memory is about 3% of the same data in a traditional system.
- All of the data is right there in active memory, saving many disk reads and writes.
- No data is stored in “intermediate calculations.” Everything in an Indelibase system is calculated from the original records, every time. This means no risk of “data drift.” You can change your calculations and procedures and not worry about updating every little intermediate calculation or table, making Indelibase far more robust.
- The Single Stack is continually backed up to the hard drive – in the background so it doesn’t use up any of your time and the data is always safe from an interruption or a power failure.
- Indelibase can easily maintain multiple backup copies of the database; it just has to put each form on the backup stacks as they come in. This is much harder for relational databases, as they end up having to re-copy the whole database, with all its tables and indices, every time they want to back up.
"ADD" Only
The other main feature of Indelibase is that it has only one basic function: “ADD.” You ADD records to the pile – there is no “Change” or “Delete.” “But wait!” you say, “What if I need to change something?” Simple, just open the form and make a change, or void it. It will look like a change or a delete, but in actual fact the system just posts an updated version. Add as many updates as you want. Add a record that voids the transaction, then later you can add another one that restores it.
Advantages
- Checking the work is much easier because you never lose any of the old data.
- The transparency and reliability of Indelibase make it easy for your organization to be Sarbanes-Oxley and GAAP compliant.
You can mathematically prove that your database hasn’t been tampered with. - The most recent record controls, but the great thing is that you can always go back and look at earlier versions to see the whole history, because it’s all still there.
With Indelibase behind it, Formever has greater speed, greater security, and greater reliability.