Design Simplicity and Ease of Use
Simplicity of Clusterpoint database platform
use was our key design
requirement for a number of areas in our database technology.
Simplicity of database model:
Clusterpoint
database logically works as a simple XML / JSON data storage
where
each data object (XML / JSON document) can have any schema-less
free-format data structure and custom content with fully denormalized
database model (no multiple tables, all relational data included within
XML parent-child hierarchy).
Simplicity of data format:
We support both XML and JSON at API level, and in particular, open XML
data format that is used internally by Clusterpoint to store and manage
all its data. XML is
nearly universally supported by any other software systems, it is an
established industry
standard and open data format that would last for decades.
Clusterpoint
also allows users to use rich text values when describing their
database objects without relational encoding with keys so that
any
Clusterpoint database becomes human-readable, at the same time
preserving generic machine-readability for XML or JSON.
Please
see Fully
Denormalized Database Model.
Simplicity
of scalability on different hardware architecture:
Clusterpoint database
software platform scales up and scales out equally well. It
can
efficiently use very powerful "big iron" hardware by scaling
up.
In cluster setup it uses ubiquitous commodity computers and networking
equipment
with modest computing power for aggregate computing power.
This
agility to use whatever hardware resources are provided is the result
of a Ranked Full Data Index
and Information Ranking,
a Clusterpoint unique database indexing mechanism that creates a
graph-based full database content index, that can be
efficiently scaled up and scaled out.
Simplicity of
database indexing: Clusterpoint
automatically and fully indexes any custom database content for all
kind of super-fast database search and access needs, including for fast
sub-second full text search across entire database content.
There
is no need for our customers to program anything for this indexing in
their application software. Clusterpoint Server uses Information Ranking
as our home-grown mechanism to build extremely fast, scalable
in
clusters and pre-sorted database index. Please see Ranked Full Data Index.
Simplicity of
search, including combined structured and unstructured data access:
Clusterpoint
ability to instantly search database structure similarly to SQL and at
the same time perform
high quality enterprise search in any text values or across entire
database content are two features that
sets our software technology "miles apart" from other SQL and NoSQL
databases. We deliver Google-like search experience in any
custom
database out-of-the-box. Please see Search
Simplicity.
Simplicity to develop natively scalable web and mobile services applications: Our customers can start programming natively scalable applications in typical interactive web and mobile services model fully supported by Clusterpoint Server, without the need to re-engineer their application software later, when databases can be scaled out in massively clustered private cloud configurations, likely with multiple replicated database mirrors, and still be able to work with the same software. Please see Native Clustering.
Simplicity of learning and
understanding:
We do not use technically sophisticated concepts to describe
our database platform. Clusterpoint
database software technology architecture is based on
few simple
database concepts already known to majority of developers community:
a concept of a simple XML / JSON data storage as a database and
a number of servers pooled together in a cluster
to run a particular clustered (distributed) database
nodes. For our customers there is no need to
use
such technical terms
as 'relations', 'primary keys',
'foreign keys', 'buckets',
'forests', 'data blocks', 'key sharding', 'map-reduce' or other
technical terminology to efficiently work with Clusterpoint database.
In fact, most of Clusterpoint data storage internal technical
complexity, where it is necessary, is hidden behind Clusterpoint
Server.
Developers and database customers can just work with a single logical
database accessing their uniquely identified XML / JSON data objects
stored there in the Clusterpoint database (storage), without worrying
about
technicalities of clustering, replication or software engineering
details driving the
Clusterpoint database platform software that makes all cluster nodes to
work together. The platform is fully documented for software
developers understanding and use, please see Documentation.
Simplicity of deployment:
Our database technology can be deployed with with
zero-installation efforts as pre-configured virtual machine images.
Just launch Clusterpoint
Server CLOUD Licence AMI image from Amazon AWS
services (look for 3rd party virtual machines) or download our
pre-configured virtual machine images from our Web site. When
launched, log in into Clusterpoint Manager application and start using
our simple web-GUI interface to create storages, configure them, load
data etc. You can start working with fully functional
Clusterpoint DBMS right away, please see Deployment
in Less Than 5 Minutes. For those customers who
prefer to install and run database sever software on their own
hardware, the Clusterpoint Server software installation package is also
available as
free download from our company Web site section Download.
Simplicity of integration: There is no client software necessary to store, access and search data in Clusterpoint DBMS. Use our REST API web services or native TCP transport (through our API libraries for specific programing languages) and "talk" with Clusterpoint Server in XML or JSON, data formats nearly universally supported across different IT platforms. You can actually learn our API in just a couple of hours and start programming for Clusterpoint databases, using your own favorite programming language. There is nearly no learning curve in Clusterpoint software deployment and use. Clusterpoint Server does all database clustering and scaling functionality behind the scenes, where this complexity is hidden from application software. We automate on a database server level all database content indexing, search and cluster management tasks. We unlock application software from database structure complexities, cluster configuration, data sorting tasks and database replication tasks. It is all done by Clusterpoint Server software, transparently from application, there is no need to program this logic into application software code. Please see Clusterpoint API.
Simplicity of high-performance reliable computing: Please note that our database technology is seemingly simplistic in use and appearance, but our software engineering efforts that underlies Clusterpoint Server implementation in the software source code is neither simple, nor trivial. The software undergone many years of testing, bug-fixing and its reliability was proved by our customers running it in 365/24 production environment for their mission-critical Internet and corporate services. Clusterpoint was designed to work as a single cohesive database software platform, engineered for maximum performance and scalability and designed to run on clustered networked hardware. Code is optimized to run close to machine-level speed. We took advantage of the best industry software engineering standards and methods such as multi-core processing, multi-threading, data and index in-memory caching, map-reduce type of interprocess communications in distributed cluster architecture for the total aggregate computing power and storage. Clusterpoint Server is driven by powerful and functionally rich high-speed data base server software source code that is written entirely in fast C/C++, optimized for modern hardware architecture. This originally designed software code was written by us from ground-zero and is being supported and improved by our team of professional software developers; we are also Clusterpoint co-founders. Please see Clusterpoint Team.
Simplicity of database administration: We provide enterprise-class DBMS management software by supplying Clusterpoint Manager, a web-server application written in open source PHP programming language for centralized administration and control of all Clusterpoint database services enterprise-wide. It has very simple to use web-GUI based administrator interface based on central dashboard that gives instant visibility of all database servers and Clusterpoint storages running in corporate network, and allows to configure, control and monitor all of them, including one-click cluster-wide management controls. Please see Clusterpoint Manager.
Simplicity of agile application software development: Clusterpoint enables our customers to cut their application software development time from months to weeks, saving significant development efforts and shortening time to market for their new products and new Web services. There is no need to integrate Clusterpoint based customer application software source code with distributed file systems, map-reduce platforms, big-table columnar databases or enterprise search platforms when using Clusterpoint. Clusterpoint database technology delivers great value for money: a long-term scalable data storage infrastructure, empowered with native clustering and great database search facility out-of-the-box. It saves tons of human maintenance efforts for all related software over IT system life-cycle due to much simpler database architecture and data model. Technology provides also excellent interoperability with already existing customer software applications, eliminating entire layers of IT complexity compared to integrated solutions typically used to drive applications that are created around legacy SQL "world" concepts. It delivers agility and speed for software developers. Please see Solutions.
