Actian Zen (PSQL)
Developer(s)Actian Corporation
Stable release
v15 SP2 (15.20) / August 15, 2021
Operating systemCross-platform
Available inEnglish, Japanese
TypeDBMS, RDBMS, NoSQL
LicenseShareware
Websitewww.actian.com/data-management/zen-embedded-database/

Actian Zen (formerly Btrieve, later named Pervasive PSQL until version 13) is an ACID-compliant, Zero-DBA, Embedded, Nano-footprint, Multi-Model, Multi-Platform database management system (DBMS)[1] developed originally by Pervasive Software, which was acquired by Actian Corporation in 2013.[2]

It is optimized for embedding in applications[3] and used in several different types of packaged software applications offered by independent software vendors (ISVs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It is available for software as a service (SaaS) deployment[4] due to a file-based architecture enabling partitioning of data for multitenancy needs.

Applications can store the data and the relationships in tables in a relational model (RDBMS) or store the data in a schema-less way with no fixed data model (key-value store).

Zen runs on system platforms that include Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Zen are available. Editions are also specifically designed for different computer networking deployment needs such as workgroup, client-server and highly virtualized environments including Cloud computing.

Uses and customers

Because Zen is used for embedded databases, and sold indirectly, it is not well known.[5] Pervasive Software was acquired by Actian Corporation in 2013.[6] Zen is embedded by OEMs like Sage,[7] maestro* Technologies, ABACUS Research AG (Switzerland), and Unikum (Sweden) in packaged software applications that address the accounting, finance, retail, point-of-sale, entertainment, reservation system, and medical and pharmaceutical industry segments. “Users include Novell, Microsoft, PeachTree Software, Fair Isaac, Disney World, Radio Shack, Cardiff and others.”[8] The accounting industry formed a large part of its market in 2007.[8]

Historically, Zen served as a DBMS for small and medium enterprises.[9]

DBMS architecture

Zen supports stand-alone, client-server, peer-to-peer[10] and software-as-a-service (SaaS)[4] architecture.

The central architecture of Zen consists of two database engines: (1) the storage engine, known as MicroKernel Database Engine (MKDE) and described by Pervasive Software as a transactional database engine and (2) the relational database engine, known as SQL Relational Database Engine (SRDE). Both engines can access the same data, but the methods of data access differ.[11]

Micro Kernel Database Engine

Micro Kernel Database Engine, the transactional database engine, interacts directly with the data and does not require fixed data schema to access the data. It uses key-value store to store and access the data. Calls to the MKDE are made pro grammatically with Btrieve API[10] rather than through the use of a query language; therefore, Zen does not have to parse the request. This places the Micro Kernel Database Engine in the category of NotOnlySQL databases.[12] Low-level API calls and memory caching of data reduce the time required to manipulate data.

The MKDE operates in complete database transactions and guarantees full ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability).[1] If a transaction does not fully run its course due to an external event such as a power interruption, the data remains in the state in which it existed before the transaction began to run.

In the MKDE, records are stored in files which are roughly equivalent to the tables of a relational database engine. It supports multiple keys on a record and therefore multiple indexes in the file. The MKDE caches data in memory to facilitate performance. When a call is made to the MKDE, cached data is searched first; physical storage is searched if there is no cache of the data. Configuration settings for caches can be pre-configured by ISVs to optimize Zen performance for their applications.

Relational Database Engine

The second database engine, the SQL Relational Database Engine or SRDE, operates in a manner similar to other relational database engines, that is, through the support of Structured Query Language queries. SRDE parses SQL queries and sends them to the MKDE to run.

The SRDE implements SQL-92.[13] Significant other features include relational integrity, database security, and temporary tables. SRDE extends its functionality by supporting stored procedures, user-defined functions, and triggers.[14]

In addition to its support for SQL-92, the SRDE supports several significant features of COBOL: COBOL data types and COBOL OCCURS and VARIANT records.[10]

Additional features

PSQL provides the following additional features:

Interfaces

Interfaces for Pervasive PSQL
Interfaces for Pervasive PSQL

Zen interfaces fall into two categories: management interfaces and data manipulation interfaces.

Management interfaces

Actian provides the management interfaces Distributed Tuning Interface (DTI)[10] and Distributed Tuning Objects (DTO), a Component Object Model (COM) adapter pattern (wrapper) for the DTI.[10] These provide application programming interfaces for configuration, monitoring, and diagnostics of Pervasive components. COBOL can also provide component management through a COBOL connector that can talk to DTI.[20]

Application interfaces

All other interfaces[10] exist for data manipulation purposes.

Tools

Actian provides utility software designed to facilitate administration and use of Zen.[10] There are graphical and command line utilities in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X environments.

Zen Control Center (CC) is the main utility that enables the user to create and manipulate databases and tables, to access servers and clients, to set configuration, properties, and to edit data. Through CC, the user can access a series of other utilities:

  • License Administrator utility handles license management activities.
  • Notification Viewer utility displays licensing-related messages logged by the PSQL engine.
  • Monitor utility checks and displays activities and attributes of both engines, including resource usage, session information, and communication statistics.
  • System Analyzer utility tests the connections between the engines and within the network and displays information about system components.
  • Maintenance utility enables users to create and edit schema-less files.
  • Rebuild utility enables users to convert file formats and rebuild files in its MKDE file format.
  • DDF (data definition file) Builder utility enables SQL users to create and modify table schemas for data stored in the MKDE, thus providing relational access to the data.
  • Query Plan Viewer enables SQL users to analyze query plans for optimization.
  • Function Executor assists developers with development, testing, and debugging by simulating direct API operations into MKDE and providing a view into the schema-less data.

Versions

See Btrieve, beginning with Pervasive.SQL 7.

Editions and licensing

Editions

There are four editions of Zen:

Licensing

There are two different licensing models, user-count licensing and capacity-based licensing.[10]

  • In user-count licensing, each product key specifies a licensed user. At any given moment, that many users can be connected to the engine.
  • Capacity-based licensing is based on the amount of processing performed by the database engine. It measures data in use and sessions in use. This license model is designed to facilitate Cloud computing and highly virtualized environments.

Both Zen Edge Server and Zen Enterprise Server use a user-count licensing model, while Zen Cloud Server uses capacity-based licensing, and Zen Core is royalty-free for developers.

Limitations

Actian Zen lacks:

  • some of the data warehousing, data mining, and reporting services built into database engines such as MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server.[11]
  • Unicode support in the RDBMS layer.
  • the ability to perform distributed transactions.
  • support for database caching unless the application has specifically been designed to take advantage of the Client Caching Engine (very few applications take advantage of this feature), the inbuilt feature of the engine and only supported caching option. Because the engine does not natively support database contention negotiation but relies on the front-end to manage contention issues, it is infrequently implemented. This makes the majority of applications developed with Zen unsuitable on any system where network or host server performance could cause a performance bottleneck.[25]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Wiejers, Ben (October 2001) [December 2000]. "Transactions, Locking and DataFlex". Data Access Worldwide. Archived from the original on 2012-05-05. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  2. ↑ "Actian Corporation and Pervasive Software Unite to Take Action on Big Data". Archived from the original on 2013-12-02. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  3. ↑ Stanley, Nigel; Kaufman, Marcia (2007). "Delivering Embedded Database Solutions for Small and Medium-sized Businesses" (PDF). Hurwitz and Associates. Archived from the original on 2023-08-13. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  4. 1 2 Bloor, Robin; Jozwiak, Rebecca (December 2011). "Moving to the Cloud with Pervasive PSQL" (PDF). The Bloor Group. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2013-06-07. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  5. ↑ van der Lans, Rick F. (2009). The SQL Guide to Pervasive PSQL. Lulu. pp. 44–45. ISBN 978-0-557-10543-4.
  6. ↑ "Actian Corporation and Pervasive Software Unite to Take Action on Big Data". Archived from the original on 2013-12-02. Retrieved 2013-06-13.
  7. ↑ "Manufacturing ERP Software–Sage PFW ERP". Sagepfw.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
  8. 1 2 Vaughan, Jack (October 16, 2002). "Pervasive on replication trail". Application Development Trends. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Software provides growth solution for organization databases". ThomasNet News. September 26, 2007. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "Pervasive Documentation Library: Pervasive PSQL v11 SP2". Pervasive Software. April 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  11. 1 2 Lax, Joe (January 23, 2004). "Top-notch Auditing an Impressive Add-on for Pervasive.SQL". DevX.com. Archived from the original on November 23, 2010. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  12. ↑ "LIST OF NOSQL DATABASES". NoSQL. Archived from the original on December 26, 2018. Retrieved April 30, 2012.
  13. ↑ Brettski (January 4, 2009). "Methods for interacting with a Pervasive SQL database". stackoverflow. Archived from the original on August 13, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
  14. ↑ van der Lans, Rick F. (2009). The SQL Guide to Pervasive PSQL. Lulu. pp. 443–548. ISBN 978-0-557-10543-4.
  15. ↑ "What file versions does Row Level Locking (RLL) work with in Pervasive.SQL 2000?". Pervasive Software. June 2001. Archived from the original on 2023-08-13. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  16. 1 2 "Pervasive Software Delivers Pervasive PSQL Summit v10.10 Database". Pervasive Software. June 11, 2008. Archived from the original on January 31, 2013. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  17. ↑ Durham, Dale (April 23, 2008). "Unicode support?". Pervasive Community Site. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
  18. ↑ "Pervasive Documentation Library: Pervasive AuditMaster". Pervasive Software. April 2012. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  19. ↑ "Pervasive Documentation Library: Pervasive DataExchange". Pervasive Software. April 2012. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  20. ↑ "Pervasive Documentation Library: Pervasive PSQL v10" (PDF). Pervasive Software. April 2008. Archived from the original on 2023-08-13. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
  21. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-04-10. Retrieved 2023-04-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  22. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-04-10. Retrieved 2023-04-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  23. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2023-04-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  24. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-04-10. Retrieved 2023-04-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  25. ↑ "Making the Most of the Client Cache Engine" (PDF). Goldstar Software Inc. March 7, 2016. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 15, 2018. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
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