4th Dimension is a graphical relational database designed for both casual users and expert programmers. Combining an intuitive, flexible interface and a industrial-strength programming language, 4th Dimension is an ideal development environment for all types of users and for companies of all sizes. Start Small and Build - 4th Dimension users can start with a simple database structure that includes 4D's automatic screens, reports, query tools, and other built-in features. As needs grow, users can add scripts to automate calculations, create buttons and drop-down list boxes to facilitate data entry, and write procedures for a completely custom interface. Web Capabilities - 4D incorporates data management on the Web as a standard database task within the 4D integrated client/server architecture. Users can work with any 4D form in a browser to create and publish data on the Web without writing a line of code or compromising data security. 4D supports HTML formats and external products; users can also add JavaScript applications and Java applets to built-in 4D features. Form Wizards - The 4D Form Wizard generates simple forms, enabling users to run an application immediately after a database structure is created. With point-and-click ease, 4D Form Wizard instantly generates a variety of forms enabling immediate access to your data. The advanced Form Wizard creates sophisticated templates. For more elaborate forms, the extensive, object-based form editor facilitates the reuse of forms and templates. Increase Productivity - 4th Dimension provides multi-tasking capabilities independent of the OS. With its multi-tasking kernel, 4DÆ can perform several tasks at once, such as importing data, generating reports, and printing labels. Each task can have its own window and is independently and automatically managed by a separate process. Using interprocess communication, actions in one window can automatically update data in another. Benefit from Platform Independence - 4th Dimension is a platform independent database. You can run a 4D database on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms without modification. Because both the Windows and Macintosh versions of 4D are based on the same source code, new features, updates, and other modifications will be available simultaneously. Automate Database Tasks - 4D contains its own procedural language that allows users to add unlimited functionality to their applications. Users can open windows, run reports, check user entries, and control the interface using over 550 built-in commands. One command in 4D's efficient language can replace hundreds of lines of programming required by other databases. Compile Code - A 4D application can be compiled into true, machine language with 4D Compiler. Compiled 4D code can run up to 1,000 times faster and provides increased security, ideal for vertical market applications. 4D Compiler allows 4D developers and users to create double-clickable, executable and client/server applications. Features - Data: 255 tables open simultaneously with unlimited relations, selections, and sets Alpha, Text, Real, Long Integer, Integer, Date, Time, Boolean, Picture (BLOBs), and Subfile 128 gigabyte data file capacity Includes data recovery tools Relations: One-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many relations Enter data, search, sort, and report across relations without programming Automatic referential integrity controls Searching and Sorting: Multi-criteria relational searching; criteria can be saved and loaded Four built-in search interfaces including Search by Formula and Search by Layout (Example) Relational searching and sorting on both indexed and non-indexed fields Interface: Graphic layout editor with complete control over shapes, colors, fonts, and styles Standard Windows and Macintosh interface objects: buttons, radio buttons,check boxes, thermometers, and more Extensive drill-down Explorer allowing easy navigation to all 4D objects Form Wizards instantly generate a variety of forms enabling immediate access to your data Advance Form Wizards automate creation and reuse of sophisticated form templates New debugger quickly and efficiently isolates and fixes source code errors Language: If, Case, For, While, and Repeat structures; local, global, and inter-process variables; one and two dimensional arrays; pointers; parameter passing; functions; object, layout, file, and global procedures Extend 4D's language with your own routines in Pascal, C, etc. Graphical Procedure editor with automatic indentation, colored keywords, search and replace, and interactive symbolic debugger Requirements Windows 486 or Pentium-based machine with a hard drive and one of the following software configurations: Windows 95 with at least 16 MB RAM; Windows NT Workstation or Server with at least 24 MB RAM; Macintosh 68020 or higher, or Power PC processor with a hard drive and the following software configuration: System 7.0 or greater with 16 MB RAM. 4th Dimension is accelerated for Power Macintosh.

Application specific database software refers to database programs that have been designed to store a particular set/sets of data.

This area is dedicated to database related conferences, conventions, and trade events.

Software products that facilitate remote data collection (for instance, via wireless Internet) into a database.

An automated analysis of structured electronic data, such as in a data warehouse, which is intended to discover previously unrecognized patterns and relationships between data items. It differs from OLAP and other forms of query-driven data analysis in that patterns are determined by the system using statistical algorithms, thereby uncovering relationships for which the user hasn't developed a query. Human analysis of the statistical patterns is then required to determine the reasons for the emerging relationships.

According to The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI):

A "Data Warehouse" is a data structure that is optimized for distribution. It collects and stores integrated sets of historical data from multiple operational systems and feeds them to one or more data marts. It may also provide end-user access to support enterprise views of data.

If there is demand, we may grow sub-categories that mirror the strategy used in the Atlas of Data Warehousing (also from TDWI) for related categories:

• Data Integrity and Cleansing Tools
• Data Modeling Tools
• Extraction and Transformation
• Data Movement Tools
• Information Servers (@link to Databases)
• Decision Support Tools
• Turnkey Decision Support Systems
• Data Warehouse Enabled Applications
• Data Warehouse Administration and Management Tools
• Data Warehouse Platforms (@link)
• Data Warehouse Consultants

DBMaker provides you with a professional database system with multimedia capabilities, a native ODBC interface, large database features, and cross-platform support. The unique open architecture and native ODBC interface give you the freedom to build custom applications using a wide variety of programming tools such as Visual Basic or Delphi, or query your database using existing ODBC-compliant applications. DBMaker is easily scaleable from personal single-user databases to distributed enterprise-wide databases. Regardless of the configuration you choose for your database, the safety of your critical data is ensured by the advanced security, integrity, and reliability features of DBMaker. Extensive cross-platform support permits you to leverage your existing hardware now, and allows you to expand and upgrade to more powerful hardware as your needs grow. DBMaker provides excellent multimedia handling capabilities, allowing you to store, search, retrieve, and manipulate all types of multimedia data. Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) allow you to ensure the integrity of your multimedia data by taking full advantage of the advanced security and crash recovery mechanisms included in DBMaker; File Objects (FOs) allow you to manage your multimedia data while maintaining the capability to edit individual files in the source application.

This category is for software applications available for Foxpro and Visual FoxPro. Visual FoxPro is considered to be one of the fasted database systems in existence. It is a data-centric, object-oriented, rapid application development (RAD) language.

GoldMine is a windows based contact manager. It offers powerful and flexible (somewhat!) manipulation of contact data, mailing lists and everything else expected of a good contact management program. It uses a standard .DBF 4 file format to give a very open base to allow manipulation of contact information with other programs.

Interbase is an SQL database which Inprise Corporation released as an open-source application. Development has forked, with many developer working on Firebird which was derived from the same code.

Microsoft Access is a mature database product which provides excellent tools for building departmental level databases. The directory's scope includes listings of interest to Access developers as well as Access users.

Sites and resources that work with Microsoft's(tm) SQL Server(tm).

Mini SQL (mSQL) is a light weight relational database management system capable of providing rapid access to your data with very little overhead.

Available from: Hughes Technologies Pty Ltd.
Official Site: http://www.hughes.com.au/products/

MySQL is a true multi-user, multi-threaded SQL database server in a client/server implementation that consists of a server daemon "mysqld" and many different client programs and libraries.

Object-oriented Database Management Systems (ODBMS or OODBMS) offer persistent storage for object data, often with direct bindings to object-oriented programming languages. They distinguish themselves from relational databases (RDBMS) in the following key points:

Complex objects can be stored without segmentation:

RDBMS require data to be normalized to avoid redundancies. This means that the values belonging to one logical unit (the object) are often spread over several database relations. To access the whole object or its interrelationships with other objects several joins may be necessary. But joins are one of the most costly operation in the relational model and thus traversals of object structures consisting of thousands of objects become too slow for applications like e.g. CAD. Also, storing an object without segmenting it eases clustering of the database.

User definable abstract data types (the classes):

RDBMS only allow to model and store data, the logic for handling this data remains wholly in the applications using the database (this is not exactly true for active databases, though). ODBMS on the other hand allow to incorporate the behavioral aspects of the data into the database itself which can ease consistency maintenance and behavior updates, and allows additional transaction models.

Object identity is inherent in the data model:

RDBMS often introduce artificial keys into the database model to ensure different entities are represented as different even though all 'natural' values are the same (e.g. two points at (1,1) in a collection of geometric figures). The uniqueness and the referential integrity of these artificial keys have to be ensured explicitly by the database or the applications, which costs time. In ODBMS object identity is an inherent concept of the language.

No impedance mismatch between programming language and DBMS:

The relational query language SQL differs from normal programming language in some respects and therefore makes coupling difficult. For example relational databases handle collections of data as sets whereas most programming languages can handle only single data items. Also, SQL is not turing-complete, which requires any calculation of a transitive closure (e.g. all ancestors of a person) to be done in the programming language.

These differences also allow ODBMS to choose more efficient strategies in other areas: Transaction mechanism can take advantage of the enhanced knowledge about the semantics of operations on the data: E.g. two "increment a by n" operations are associative and can therefore be exchanged when serializing operations; two "Read a, Write a" operations can't. Also versioning and configuration management are simpler if objects remain unsegmented. Beginning in the mid 90ties the developers of RDBMS have reacted to some of these deficiencies and introduced object-oriented concepts into their databases leading to so called Object-Relational DBMS (ORDBMS).

A major architectural distinction of ODBMS is between page servers and object servers. In a page server architecture the database server handles all data with the minimum granularity of a (memory) page. The individual objects are retrieved from these pages only on the client side. In an object server architecture the database client and server communicate on the basis of individual objects. This has major consequences on how and where transaction management, recovery and method execution are implemented. In principle, page servers should be more efficient for direct object access whereas object servers should excel if queries can be split between client- and server-side.

OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing), a technology supporting analytical capabilities against one or more of data sources. OLAP systems usually involve analyzing data that originated in a traditional database, but was then transformed into a multi-dimensional structure for easier visualization. Relational and multi-dimensional database models usually serve very different purposes; while the former is intended for read/write, transactional, high-volume activities, the latter is suited for low-volume, complex queries that span large quantities of data at any time. Relational databases have SQL as their query language; in contrast, multi-dimensional OLAP environments have no commonly accepted language, although the proprietary MDX language created by Microsoft is gaining acceptance. Related categories include: - Data mining, which attempts to discover trends and patterns in the data; - Data warehousing, which attempts to reconcile some or all of a company's data sources into a single all-encompassing database; - Data transformation tools, which provide the means to cleanse and manipulate data while transferring it from one location to another.

General information about MultiValue/Pick extended relational database management systems, including Rocket Software U2 (UniData and UniVerse), Rocket Software D3 (D3, mvBase and mvEnterprise), Zumasys jBASE, Via Systems UniVision, Revelation Software OpenInsight, Northgate Information Solutions Reality, InterSystems Caché, Ladybridge Systems OpenQM, ONgroup ONware, plus various older versions of Pick.

PostgreSQL is a powerful relational database management system (rdbms) that is similar to Ingres. PostgreSQL is an enhancement of the original POSTGRES database management system, a next-generation DBMS research prototype. While PostgreSQL retains the powerful data model and rich data types of POSTGRES, it replaces the PostQuel query language with an extended subset of SQL.

Relational technology and concepts: theory, research systems, non-SQL implementations.

Database replication is the process of copying database records from one physical database to another, either of the same or different vendors. It generally takes the forms Master/Slave or Master/Master, and can be either eager/synchronous or lazy/asynchronous. In master/slave replication, updates and inserts are only permitted on the master copy, which is replicated to the slave(s). This is the most common and stable form. In master/master or multi-master replication, updates are permitted on any copy of the data, and changes are synchronized.

Servoy is an application development and deployment environment used to create and deploy user-interface applications. Servoy consists of a GUI designer, is fully event driven and scriptable through JavaScript to help build and deploy SQL database front-end applications.

Centura offers SQLBase, an embedded database engine, as well as Centura Team Developer (CTD) for rapid application deployment.

Most relational, or table-based, databases, are controlled through SQL, Structured Query Language, sometimes pronounced "sequel". This is the category for such databases, the actual software programs that use the language.

Click Here for pages dealing with Unify Corporation's DataServer and Vision products.

Extensive resources for developers, programmers and users covering all dBASE products and all versions of the dBASE Language (dBL).

Databases are programs which store, retrieve, and present information. XML database are generally either servers, or designed to work with servers to present XML either as itself, or transformed into something more usable. This category is for indexing database applications which are designed to assist with the creation, storage, and dissemination of XML. Databases which are build using XML related technology, or have an XML derivative as their primary access method are listed in the Computers/Software/Databases/XML category.