Livebase: a database for the web 2.0

LivebaseA database for the web 2.0

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Platform briefingLivebase, a database for the web 2.0

Antonio Leonforte & Daniele Antonini (fhoster.com)

Enterprise 2.0

• Why the tipical case-study for web 2.0 technology adoption in a business environment is related tolarge companies?

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Inside an enterprise

• Production

– Strong data quality & consistency validation

– Structured data, managed by relational database technology

– Forms, transacions, implemented processes

– Quite well supported by ERPs, little to be improved

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• Decision making

– Informal communication (hard to keep track)

– Inefficient, redundantone-to-one communication

– Lot of time wasted in crowded, inefficient meetings

– High potential for web 2.0 technologyto improve efficiency

Inside an enterprise

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And small businesses ?

They matter!95% of the companies have less than 10 employees

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In small businesses

• Web 2.0 technologies still useful for customer-facing activities…– Marketing & lead generation– Customer retention

• Probably less useful internally – Few employees, located in few offices– Decisional processes already quick and lean

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Inside a small business

• Micro and small businesses often havethe opposite problem of large one

– Decisional processes are already leanand quite efficient (even without web 2.0 technologies)

– Operational processes are often highly inefficient because rarely supportedby an efficient information system

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• Many small organizations (mis)usespreadsheets as databases

The opportunity

John

Ed

Luis

Anne

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• Unfortunately spreadsheetsare not databases

No role-based access control

No data quality / integrity control

Concurrent updates can cause information loss

Multiple versions spread on multiple servers

Cannot perform correlations and queries

No compliancy when regulations apply

The opportunity

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• Why do small and large businesseskeep using spreadsheets as databases?

• No cost-effective alternatives!– DBMSs require application development

(risky and highly expensive)

– Commercial software for SMB is rigid(don’t handle properly custom data)

– ERPs are overkilland hard to configure / extend

The opportunity

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• Turning conceptual models …– compact & elegant

– easy to understand and modify

• … into database applications– virtually bug-free, and secure

– robust and scalable (multi-user)

– instantly available on the web

The concept

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• Entirely web-based– Developers just need a java-enabled browser

– Users of generated apps just need the browser(no plugins, nothing to install).

• Custom applications are– generated using open-source java technologies

– compiled and deployed on our servers, in seconds

– immediately available to authorized end-users

The Platform

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Click– Instantly on-line– Auditing & backup– No technical details

The Platform

Step 1: create a virtual server

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The Platform

Step 2: draw your data model

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The Platform

Step 3: start the server, and enjoy

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The Platform

Business apps, not toys• Complex (multi-join) queries

• Data-quality constraints– Referential integrity, cardinality, uniqueness– Value range, patterns, formula-based predicates

• Reports– Tabular– Cross-tabs,– Charts (pies, histograms, distribution)

• Business intelligence– Dynamic, multi-level grouping– Formula-based filtering

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The Platform

Administration & maintenance• Drag & drop members, engines and

databases across your servers

• Backup, restore and clone an entire server, with one click

• Download & upload databases in Access and MySQL formats

• Import and normalize multiple, cross-related Excel files

• Refine your models at any time: datababase schemas updated automatically, data preserved.

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The Platform

Physical architecture

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The Platform

Jealous of your apps & databases?• Access to your virtual server is protected using industry-

standard security technologies. And each of your databases is a real, dedicated MySQL DB (no multi-tenancy) protected by a random password.

• However, if you prefer…– Generated applications (and their databases) can be optionally

deployed at your premises or anyware in the cloud…(Amazon Web Services, GoGrid, Google App Engine for Business, etc.)

– …and can still manage and maintain all of them, using all the powerful tools provided by our platform!

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The Platform

It’s your stuff, not ours• You can freely access your data programmatically,

by means of a REST programming interface…(interface the applications you already have) …

• …but you can also buy your applications at any time, and install them on any java-enabled server(Linux, Windows, Sun Solaris…)

– All the applications generated on Livebase are entirely based on standard, open-source java technology.

– You can buy the binary (a standard WAR file) or even the source code (with comments and documentation). And it’s yours, forever.

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The Platform

Using the platform

<Screencam>

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The company

Join our beta program

Livebase: a database for the web 2.0

Technology

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