The concept and architecture of Ultralite

Introduction to Ultralite

With the advent of small computing devices (handheld computers, pagers, and mobile phones), a database with a memory requirement less than adaptive Server Anywhere is required. One obvious option is to produce a smaller relational database engine, but experience shows that each application and each client has a different set of features that are essential to them. In addition, it also means that customers must have two different databases, and they inevitably have some differences.

Instead of choosing this approach, we developed UltraLite, a new technology that uses reference databases and application source code to build the relational database engine, which contains only those adaptive Server Anywhere features that the application uses. Each query is stored with a complete access plan for quick execution, and the code needed to perform the tasks you need is built into the UltraLite database engine. Each UltraLite database engine is different, but many engines are only dozens of KB and can be easily run on a small device such as a pager.

When you create an UltraLite application, Adaptive server anywhere is used as a reference database, so its SQL statements, data types, and so on are exactly the same as adaptive server anywhere. UltraLite is a deployment technique for adaptive Server Anywhere, not another different database system. The tasks that each UltraLite database engine is suited to perform are performed in a manner that is fully compatible with adaptive Server Anywhere.

UltraLite has built-in MobiLink synchronization technology, so you can link applications to the information network.

UltraLite supports other operating systems (such as Java) that are used on Palm Computing Platform, Windows CE, and small devices.

UltraLite Architecture

To provide a database application to a small device, such as a handheld manager, you might want to use UltraLite deployment technology. In UltraLite, the database server and application are part of the same process, and the database server varies by application.

In this case, the database may not be a file on disk. The way the database is stored depends on the deployment platform.