InterSystems

While InterSystems has customers in all vertical sectors, the company has a particular focus on healthcare and financial services. For example, Ensemble (remember that Ensemble is effectively a layer implemented on top of Caché) has a dominant position in the UK's National Health Service. However, looking forward, InterSystems has the potential to be a significant player in areas such as social media analysis (because of iKnow), smart metering and other machine-to-machine environments.

Users of Caché specifically, as opposed to any other products, include Press Computer Systems (PCS), Epic Systems, The Belgian Police, BNP Paribas, Epic Systems, The European Space Agency (this is a 'big data' implementation), IBM, Johns Hopkins, Optalert (a sensor-based 'breakthrough application'), SPAR, TD Ameritrade, Whitbread and many others.

Caché is the company's database and development environment which acts as the basis for all of the company's other products: InterSystems Ensemble (a platform for connected applications), InterSystems HealthShare and InterSystems TrakCare (specialised solutions for the healthcare sector, DeepSee (for embedding analytics into operational applications) and iKnow (which offers a text analytics capability). DeepSee and iKnow (which can run together) are collectively known as Active Analytics.

Caché, which was first introduced in 1997, is available to run under HP-UX, AIX, HP Tru64 UNIX, HP OpenVMS, Sun Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows (various versions) and the Apple Macintosh. In modern parlance the product is a NoSQL database though, of course, the product existed long before anyone came up with the term.

Caché is, on the one hand, a database and, on the other, a rapid application development environment. As a database the product uses a multi-dimensional storage engine. This means that if you want to use it for relational tables then you can do so, because a table is just a two-dimensional array. Alternatively, the engine supports an object-oriented approach (with no impedance mismatch) that allows you to store business objects, customers or patients, for example, as complete entities without having to disperse this information across multiple tables with all the complications of referential integrity that you would require when using a relational approach. There is a free-to-download version of Caché that provides just the storage engine.

As a development environment you can continue to use a relational paradigm if you wish, for the environment supports SQL as well as a wide range of popular programming languages. However, there are also Caché-specific development capabilities that take advantage of tight integration with the database to provide superior performance. In some cases this integration has also been extended to standard languages such as Java. Note that you are not limited to any particular choice: it is common, for example, for Caché developers to use InterSystems' provided capabilities for some purposes but still use SQL for reporting, say.

InterSystems offers a worldwide central response centre as well as local support and individual support groups for each of its main product lines. The company also provides a specialised portal on its web site for developers as well as a formal education and training programme. There is also a campus programme for students and faculty.

As a free product the intention behind GlobalsDB is to encourage a broader community of users and developers that are familiar with InterSystems' technology, that will/may in due course wish to adopt the full Caché product. 

InterSystems has customers in all vertical sectors, though the company has a particular focus on healthcare and financial services. Looking forward, InterSystems has the potential to be a significant player in areas such as social media analysis, smart metering and other machine-to-machine environments (the Internet of Things).

There are no case studies or user details on the GlobalsDB website. However, users of Caché specifically, as opposed to any other InterSystems' products, include Press Computer Systems (PCS), Epic Systems, The Belgian Police, BNP Paribas, The European Space Agency (this is a 'big data' implementation), IBM, Johns Hopkins, Optalert (a sensor-based 'breakthrough application'), SPAR, TD Ameritrade, Whitbread and many others.

Caché is the company's database and development environment which acts as the basis for all of the company's other products, while GlobalsDB is the database engine inside Caché.

Caché (and therefore GlobalsDB), which was first introduced in 1997, is available to run under HP-UX, AIX, HP Tru64 UNIX, HP OpenVMS, Sun Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows (various versions) and the Apple Macintosh. In modern parlance the product is a NoSQL database though, of course, the product existed long before anyone came up with the term.

As a database GlobalsDB uses a multi-dimensional storage engine. This means that if you want to use it for relational tables then you can do so, because a table is just a two-dimensional array. Alternatively, the engine supports an object-oriented approach (with no impedance mismatch) that allows you to store business objects, customers or patients, for example, as complete entities without having to disperse this information across multiple tables with all the complications of referential integrity that you would require when using a relational approach. Similarly, you can build your own NoSQL implementations on top of GlobalsDB: key-value stores, document stores, graph databases or customised database types.

Currently supported APIs for GlobalsDB are Java, Node.js and .NET. The company will add new APIs subject to user demand.

For GlobalsDB there is documentation available online, along with FAQs, a forum and blogs.

More broadly, InterSystems offers a worldwide central response centre as well as local support and individual support groups for each of its main product lines. The company also provides a specialised portal on its website for developers as well as a formal education and training programme. There is also a campus programme for students and faculty.