Versatility
The Versatility of a database is dependent on several factors; Scalability, Interoperability and Usability.
Client/Server databases, normally, can be scaled, that is, you can design your system to allow for extreme growth in the number of users, and the amount of data stored by the system. Fifteen years ago Scalability was not a primary consideration of most databases. In those days most database applications had a static number of users that did not increase or decrease very often, and the data stored, and/or retrieved, did not grow or shrink very quickly. If an application had to hold more data than it was designed to, an entire project was usually made to redesign the application. This was because most computer systems were isolated, the number of users a system could be designed for was limited to the number of users connected to the system. This number was usually very small, limited to hundreds, or in rare cases thousands of users. This all changed as the popularity of The Internet grew. With internet applications, the number of users were almost limitless. Once an application was published on The Internet a system could be used by one or two people one day, and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people the very next day. In this environment Scalability, and therefore Flexibility, became a very important factor in any system that may eventually have Internet users. If the application you are purchasing or building needs the flexibility to scale from a small number of users to a large number be sure to give this attribute an appropriate amount of consideration.
The Interoperability of a database really measures a database’s ability to share information with other applications. If a database is proprietary, as is the case with the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) application I deal with on a daily basis, it usually does not allow users the ability to use the data in any other capacity than what was built into, or licensed from, the original application. In my case, the reporting tool built into our EMR is proprietary, and I cannot query the data directly, this not only limits my ability to retrieve information from the database, but it also requires that anyone else who is responsible for designing, or running any reports on the system to be trained to use the reporting tool. This forces HR to adjust the Job Description of anyone who deals with our EMR’s Reports, as well as making adjustments to the employee training budget for those existing internal employees who will need to interact with any of our reports. A more Interoperable database would allow for more applications, ie Crystal Reports or SQL Reporting Services, to be able to use the information within the database. The greater the number of 3rd party tools that can utilize a database, the greater the chance that an internal solution can be built for use outside of the application by an organization’s existing staff. Be sure to ask your vendor how you can use the data you will be storing in your database in other applications or databases.
Usability deals directly with how easily a user can use the database. The more usable an database is, the shorter the time, and money, used by staff to implement the database. Most Flat Files are not very usable by nature as the data they contain is normally proprietary to the application that stored the information. ISAM Databases will probably be more useful until you involve multiple users accessing the same database.
Client/Server databases are almost always the most scalable, the most interoperable, and usable of any of the aforementioned database types discussed below.
