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A Brief Discussion About Databases
Five years ago, few buyers of
accounting software gave much thought to the underlying
database—after all, they were pretty much stuck with the database
engine the developer had designed into the product. Today, however,
many accounting vendors have engineered their applications to
accommodate a variety of database engines—a major advantage for the
user. Select the database that matches the user's unique needs, and
not only can it save lots of money but also the accounting package
can run faster and better—even allowing it to be scaled up as the
business grows.
As a result, it's now imperative
that prospective buyers give careful consideration to database
selection, which depends mostly on the volume of transactions
processed across an organization's local or wide area network (LAN
or WAN). In general, the more transactions, the more robust the
database needs to be and the higher its cost in terms of purchase
price, implementation and maintenance.
What gave users the flexibility to
select a database application was the decision by most top
accounting software vendors to separate the so-called business logic
part of their programs from the underlying database. For example,
Microsoft Great Plains sells its standard version of Dynamics, which
runs on either the Btrieve or C/tree database, for the average
retail price of $5,000; the higher-end version, Dynamics C/S+,
operates with the Microsoft SQL Server database and sells for about
$50,000. The two accounting programs share similar programming code;
however, the underlying database used in Dynamics C/S+ is far more
powerful—accounting for the higher cost of the system.
Separate is
Better
A significant advantage of
separating the program's business logic from the database is that it
allows vendors to easily adopt new database technologies as they
emerge. For example, databases of the future are expected to offer
better Java support, better functionality across the Internet,
improved security, better support for handheld devices and thinner
applications—that is, those that rely more heavily on the power of
the server. It's likely, too, that tomorrow's databases will exhibit
better compression support for the storage of wave (sound), image,
video, fingerprint and retina scan files. So it's important to be
able to upgrade a database without a major rewrite of the accounting
software.
It's sometimes to the user's
advantage to select the most powerful database it can afford. For
example, earlier this year, Open Systems introduced a version of
Traverse that operates on the Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 database. Its
own testing showed that running Traverse on the Microsoft Access
database required more than six hours to process a transaction that
consisted of 85,000 records. The same transaction was processed in
just five seconds when running Traverse on the SQL Server 7.0
database.
Although these are impressive
results, don't conclude that the more powerful databases are always
the best option; such a conclusion can be very expensive. For
example, historically the decision to implement an accounting
software package on the SQL Server database added about an
additional $100 per user to the cost of the accounting system. Most
often this additional cost was buried in the overall price of the
software. Assuming your company has 250 users, the additional cost
of the database application would be $25,000.
But those aren't the only costs.
The typical consulting fees for installing a SQL Server-based
accounting package range from $70,000 to $190,000. Although SQL
Server 7.0 is said to be much less expensive to implement and
administer. In addition, there are ongoing support costs, which also
are much higher for complex systems.
Determining which database is best
suited for a company often is difficult. The goal is to select the
lowest priced database that meets customers' current and anticipated
needs. While the SQL Server is a popular choice, less expensive
alternatives are available from Pervasive Software, which offers two
products that are widely embraced by the accounting software
industry: Btrieve and Pervasive.SQL. Both products perform well in
the middle market and get the job done for a fraction of the
cost—for example, $49 per user for Pervasive.SQL compared with $160
per user for SQL Server 7.0. Further, based on historical figures,
the consulting fees and ongoing support costs for the Pervasive
products appear to be 50% to 75% less than those for SQL Server,
Oracle8 or IBM DB/2.
Microsoft currently offers three
editions of SQL Server. Back Office Small Business Server (SBS) is
limited to 50 users and 10 gigabyte databases. Both SQL Server 7.0
and SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise contain no such limitations. Microsoft
says the installation costs of these editions will be lower due to
reduced administration requirements.
The Access
Advantage
At the lower end of the market are
less robust databases, in terms of speed and performance, but they
typically offer strong end-user tools and are easy to use. For
example, Microsoft's Access is excellent when it comes to
integrating accounting data with the other Microsoft Office
products.
Because it's written in Access,
Traverse inherits a host of powerful functions. Reports produced by
Traverse can be sent directly into Word or Excel with the click of a
button. Reports also may be e-mailed directly to individuals or
groups, avoiding the costly process of printing and distributing the
report. Traverse also can print any report to an HTML format, which
makes the process of publishing financial or accounting data on the
Internet or intranet much easier. Companies requiring a more
powerful database can implement Traverse on SQL Server.
Aside from price and performance,
there is another important difference between the middle-market and
the low-end databases: Higher end databases offer client/server
functionality.
By definition, a client/server
system involves the delivery of data from a server computer to a
client workstation. However, client/server architecture makes the
database operate faster even on a single computer system. In that
case, the delivery of data from the computer's hard disk to the
application running on the computer is more efficient and, hence,
faster. Therefore, client/server architecture offers two types of
performance gains: efficient record delivery (it's often referred to
as ERD) on the single computer or server computer and client/server
delivery (CSD) from the server computer to the client workstation.
Costly Mistake
Because client/server benefits can
be impressive, many customers conclude it's always the best option;
this can be a costly assumption. With lower volumes of data,
client/server databases actually can perform more slowly than other
nonclient/server databases because of the heavy data administration
overhead. As transaction volume increases, client/server databases
far outperform their older counterparts. Therefore, the actual
performance gains you realize at the single computer or server
computer will depend on the volume of your data.
Further, if your company currently
has plenty of excess bandwidth on its LAN, it's unlikely a
client/server system will improve performance across the LAN
dramatically; this is because a client/server system helps solve LAN
data bottleneck problems. However, if your company doesn't have such
problems or doesn't expect to have them in the foreseeable future,
then a client/server system may be unnecessary.
If your company's wiring system is
reaching overload, consider upgrading the network cards, cables and
hubs. For example, you may want to explore higher capacity cabling,
such as fiber optics, or the latest one-gigabyte technology called
Level VI wire. This strategy, which may be far less expensive,
improves the performance of all applications, such as e-mail,
printing and accounting.
Companies with WANs face an
additional problem. While the cost of upgrading LAN wiring is fairly
affordable, not so the costs of upgrading WAN wiring. WAN
connections—the cables that link LANs together—usually employ slower
wiring technologies such as phone lines, ISDN lines or T1 lines.
These slower connections become major bottlenecks. The cost of
upgrading a WAN connection to run at the speed of your LAN can total
hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. So in a WAN environment,
a client/server system is most likely the best choice. |
