Company : Customers : Pervasive

Pervasive Software: Painless .NET Database Access

Goal:

To outsource expertise and support for .NET connectivity to the company’s Pervasive PSQL Summit database product.

Why Pervasive selected DataDirect:

Pervasive had an established fruitful relationship with DataDirect and was impressed by DataDirect’s grasp of the higher-level strategic aspects of .NET and their ties with Microsoft in support of that strategic insight.

Business benefits:

Pervasive can devote its staff to core business activities concerning database development rather than on providing reliable .NET connectivity.

Technical benefits:

DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET consists of 100 percent managed code, eliminating calls to unmanaged code and taking full advantage of many .NET Framework features, to deliver superior performance, more efficient operation, and better security for Pervasive’s .NET customers.

Company Background: 25 Years of Database Development

Pervasive Software® has been providing powerful, reliable embedded databases to ISVs and their customers within small and medium enterprises for more than 25 years beginning in 1982 with the acclaimed and widely adopted Btrieve® database and continuing with the company’s flagship Pervasive PSQL Summit™ v10 relational database today. Pervasive’s embedded databases are used by thousands of businesses, ranging from mom and pop operations to nationwide franchise chains to Fortune 500 enterprises in more than 150 countries.

The Challenge: To Provide Comprehensive and Cutting-Edge .NET Connectivity

As the PSQL product has evolved, Pervasive has selectively partnered with third-party vendors to supply best-of-breed technologies. One of those vendors was DataDirect Technologies, which supplied ODBC database connectivity with its DataDirect Connect for ODBC product and .NET connectivity with DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET.

“We’d been releasing the DataDirect .NET runtime components on our Web site as a separate download for our developer customers,” says Jim Beecher, Senior Product Manager for PSQL at Pervasive. “In just two years we’d seen a roughly 40 percent jump in .NET downloads. It became very clear to us that .NET was going to be the future of Microsoft and we wanted a strong offering for our customers using that platform.”

It also became obvious to Pervasive that the newest version (v10) of Pervasive PSQL would be expected to offer cutting-edge .NET support in order to meet the needs of today’s database customers. Since those customers consist of both end-users and developers, Pervasive needed to provide .NET support both to the end-users who use its databases directly and to the developers who integrate Pervasive PSQL into their applications. Pervasive sought a solution that would provide not only the performance and reliability to satisfy its direct customers, but also the development support, integration ease and distribution features demanded by its developer customers.

In addition, Pervasive expected to accomplish this while avoiding delays to its product release schedule.

“We considered whether to develop .NET support in-house, but decided the best way to meet our own business objectives while satisfying our customers’ needs would be to partner with someone who was already a recognized leader in the .NET environment,” Beecher said. “We had the expertise with ODBC and JDBC but wanted to partner with a company that not only has excellent .NET software, but also the capability to provide the quality support that our developer community has come to expect from Pervasive.”

The Solution: .NET Expertise and Support from DataDirect

Because Pervasive Software already had an ongoing relationship with DataDirect, it seemed natural to turn to the leader in data connectivity for a solution. Several things about DataDirect and the company’s .NET data provider — DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET — immediately appealed to Pervasive.

Pervasive was familiar with DataDirect’s products and had confidence that DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET would fulfill the technical requirements easily. DataDirect’s product was also very convenient for developers and provided all of the necessary design-time components (used during development) and runtime components (used at install time). This, in turn, made it easy for developers to create and distribute their companies’ products. Further, including these components in the latest Pervasive PSQL install package simplifies distribution even more.

DataDirect’s understanding of the higher-level strategic aspects of .NET and the company’s close relationship with Microsoft in support of that strategic insight were important to Pervasive.

“We feel confident in our decision to partner with DataDirect given it has a vested interest in this business, a good perspective on where the market is going and a solid roadmap for .NET development to meet technology and market demands,” Beecher notes.

Finally, Beecher adds that Pervasive trusts DataDirect to provide the level of support Pervasive developer customers need and expect.

“We feel that the relationship has matured to the point that we are confident in the level of support we are receiving from the DataDirect support team,” he comments. “When we do report a problem, response time is timely, keeping our developers and partners productive and happy.”

Partnering with DataDirect has enabled Pervasive Software to concentrate its efforts on its core competence of high-performance database operations. DataDirect’s proven expertise in the .NET space and the fact that its products are the industry’s only ADO.NET data provider with a 100 percent managed code architecture has provided Pervasive a mature, well-tested, and supported component, freeing it from the cost and effort involved in developing and supporting a homegrown .NET provider.

“We are pleased to partner with a top-tier provider of .NET connectivity for database vendors,” Beecher says. “We look forward to a long-term, collaborative relationship with DataDirect and satisfying customers together.”

The Results: Happy Customers and More Time for Core Business Activities

In addition to the other types of access it supports, Pervasive Software’s new PSQL Summit v10 provides both end-user and developer customers with fast, reliable .NET connectivity. Not only can developers get all of the design-time software they need in a single download, they can then package their products so that those products include all the necessary runtime components – allowing their products to be installed in one simple process from a single distribution package.

At the same time, Pervasive can rely on DataDirect both to provide reliable .NET connectivity and to provide support for that capability, freeing Pervasive to concentrate on developing and supporting its database engine.

None of this would mean much if the customers were dissatisfied. Because DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET is 100 percent managed code that runs fully in the .NET environment it eliminates cumbersome calls to unmanaged code – such as client libraries – and takes full advantage of the many memory usage and security innovations Microsoft built into the .NET Framework. This translates into superior performance, more efficient operations and better security for Pervasive’s .NET customers.

“One of the things we’re really happy with is what our customers are saying about the performance,” Beecher says in conclusion. “There’s always some risk involved when you adopt a new technology and we weren’t 100 percent sure what the performance numbers were going to look like. However our customers are reporting great performance and are happy with the results.”