NonStop Systems Introduction

NonStop Systems Introduction—527825-001
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The Relational Database
Management System
The SQL/MX relational database management system is used by the transaction
processing environments described in Section 3, The Application Server Environment
(NonStop CORBA, NonStop Tuxedo, and WebLogic Server). SQL/MX also provides
facilities, typically used for decision support and data mining operations, for querying a
database directly from a workstation, without going through an application server
environment.
The roles of a database management system (DBMS) within an application
environment are to:
•
Provide a means to define the catalogs, tables, views, indexes, collations, and
other objects that make up the database.
•
Maintain the data that is stored in these objects by performing additions, deletions,
and updates of the data.
•
Retrieve data from tables and views to answer queries and produce reports.
The DBMS plays a vital role in the application environment because it performs all
database access for application programs. Although programs contain statements for
querying and updating databases, it is actually the DBMS that performs these services
for programs. Each query or update operation specified in a program is actually a call
to the database management software. The speed with which the program processes
data is directly related to the efficiency of the DBMS.
SQL/MX Performance and Ease of Use
HP provides the SQL/MX database management system for high-speed access to
relational databases. SQL/MX is ideally suited for ZLE data stores. SQL/MX is based
on SQL (structured query language), an industry-standard relational database
language. SQL/MX conforms to the current ANSI standard for SQL.
The high performance of SQL/MX means that applications using SQL/MX database
management services can meet two major requirements of online transaction
processing: high throughput and fast response time.
The simple relational model that underlies SQL/MX fulfills another major ZLE
requirement: ease of use. Developers can easily embed SQL/MX statements in host
language programs, so these programs can access the database.
What sets SQL/MX apart from other database management systems is this
combination of high performance and ease of use. Before SQL/MX, data processing
professionals used SQL primarily for queries in low-volume transaction processing