Frequently Asked Questions about MultiValue and Caché

For almost thirty years, InterSystems Corporation has been the partner of choice of professional application developers around the world. Two themes underlie our commitment to application developers: deliver great technology and have a total commitment to make our partners successful.

Developers in the MultiValue community have succeeded by delivering practical technology and consistent value over the long term. Pragmatism, a focus on rapid application development and a long-term view of business relationships characterize both the MultiValue world and the application partners already served by InterSystems.

InterSystems offers the MultiValue community

• a modern and exciting way to rapidly develop contemporary applications

• a blazingly fast, highly scalable and extremely reliable deployment engine

• a long-term partnership model

InterSystems implemented a broad set of MultiValue extensions to its Caché high-performance object database. These extensions bring the full range of Caché object and SQL development technologies to MultiValue developers:

• rapid application development through the latest technologies

• preservation and re-use of your existing MultiValue investments

• blending of the best of MultiValue, object, relational and web technologies

• a broad spectrum of deployment options

MultiValue features are a standard part of Caché. This release is not an add-on product or a special version of Caché for MultiValue users only.

Caché has been enhanced with a wide range of MultiValue capabilities. These include:

• MultiValue Basic (MVBasic)

• MultiValue Storage

• MultiValue Dictionaries

• MultiValue Command Shell

• MultiValue Query Language (CMQL)

• MultiValue PROCs

At the heart of Caché is a powerful, multidimensional transaction engine that includes the ability to easily deploy distributed databases. This provides application developers with a unified data architecture uniting the power of objects, high performance SQL and traditional MultiValue data access.

For MultiValue applications, Caché offers:

• A complete native object model in MVBasic, including object inheritance, persistence and polymorphism

• Native, object-based XML and Web Services support

• MultiValue aware Studio integrated development environment

• Caché Server Pages (CSP) using MVBasic

• Blindingly fast SQL (concurrently with MultiValue queries)

• Bullet-proof database

• Complete security model (including auditing and encryption of data-at-rest)

• Simple, web-based system management

MultiValue features are a standard part of Caché, and are available on all Caché platforms.

High-performance database technology has been the cornerstone of InterSystems products since our founding 28 years ago. For object and SQL based applications, Caché is the engine of choice for both performance and scalability. Our continuing investments in the Caché engine will bring new levels of performance for MultiValue applications.

No. Caché fully supports MultiValue Basic (MVBasic). You can continue to develop applications using MVBasic and MultiValue Queries. The new features are available to re-use and extend your application logic via Java, EJB, JDBC, ActiveX, .NET, C++, ODBC, XML, SOAP and more.

Yes. Caché’s Unified Data Architecture means that you can access your data as objects, SQL, as MultiValue files or using MultiValue queries.

Yes, we do and it is very similar to that on other MultiValue systems. English is the Microdata name for it; Access is the PICK name; Recall is the UniVerse name.

On Caché it is referred to as CMQL. It is described in the Caché MultiValue Query Language (CMQL) Reference.

Caché provides a utility, MVIMPORT, to import files that have been created with account export utilities from MultiValue products.

The time to migrate varies by application. InterSystems will work directly with you to facilitate your migration. Our Systems Engineers and World-Wide Response Center provide on-site, phone, web and email support.

InterSystems provides a broad range of education servicesOpens in a new tab, including on-site, classroom and web-based training. Free webinars are available covering every aspect of Caché development and deployment. New webinars specifically targeted at the MultiValue community will be introduced in the coming months.

InterSystems offers only one level of support — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our InterSystems Worldwide Response Center (WRC)Opens in a new tab (WRC) is concentrated in Cambridge, Massachusetts (for proximity to the development team) but is complemented by local offices, providing local language and time zone support. Our service is second to none.

Documentation on all aspects of Caché is available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) from our corporate websiteOpens in a new tab. You may download individual books and articles as well as groups of related material.

This same material will be available once Caché is installed on your local machine, and can be accessed via the browser of your choice.

Once Caché is installed, there are interactive tutorials that teach you how to use some of the more important features of Caché. These are also accessed online. Choose the “Caché Tutorials” options from the documentation main page.

Peruse the information on our corporate websiteOpens in a new tab.

InterSystems has a long history of working with application partners. Caché pricing is based on the model that InterSystems makes money when you make money i.e., when your application is deployed. We have a range of pricing models for Caché. Discuss your business model with us and we’ll work together to find the best model for your business.