Attributes of ActiveSpaces
These attributes of ActiveSpaces set it apart from traditional RDBMS.
- Scalability
- The biggest advantage of using ActiveSpaces is scalability. You can scale up the system horizontally to hold terabytes of data without bringing the system down. You also have complete administrative control over data redistribution.
- System of Record
- ActiveSpaces serves as a distributed, large-scale system of record that spans across nodes in an enterprise. The system of record uses the concepts of the traditional RDBMS such as table, rows, and columns. In addition, every node saves a portion of the data locally in a fault-tolerant and durable manner.
- Faster Access to Data
- ActiveSpaces support queries and indexes that improve performance. Queries run faster because data is cached in-memory. Queries in ActiveSpaces are a subset of the SQL language. The filtering and indexing capabilities offered by ActiveSpaces expedite the execution of queries.
- TIBCO FTL® for Secure Communication
- ActiveSpaces uses the capabilities of TIBCO FTL® 6.1.0 or later. A specific FTL realm contains configuration information and connectivity parameters for communication between the ActiveSpaces data grid processes and client applications. ActiveSpaces uses TIBCO FTL for the following key tasks:
- High-Performance ACID-Compliant Data Grid
- The data grid provides atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) of data. ACID-compliance is achieved by using transactions and concurrency control across multiple tables.
- Transaction Isolation
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A transaction comprises a set of operations that can modify the content of the data grid. Owing to transaction isolation, an ongoing transaction does not affect the queries that are being run on the content. For example, if another system is trying to read a row that you are trying to modify, that system either gets the data before the modification or it gets the data after the modification. The system does not get partially committed transactions. Even if the transaction is distributed over a network that involves multiples rows and tables, transaction isolation ensures that there are no uncommitted reads (dirty reads).
To achieve the highest level of transaction isolation, pessimistic transactions are used. This guarantees that a row is consistently accessed by the operation that initially accessed the row until the transaction commits or rolls back. This blocks any operation that could violate database consistency or isolation. Transactions take care of rolling back partially committed transactions.
- Easy-to-Use APIs
- ActiveSpaces provides tools for data definitions that are akin to the SQL language. You can also define how data is distributed across a configurable number of nodes. The support functions in the API are easy to use. You can use the functions to retrieve metadata information about the data grid, a specific table, or a result set.
- Real-Time Push Events
- ActiveSpaces provides real-time push events over the network to servers and client applications to change the data grid. Table listeners receive data change events through callback notifications.
- Cloud Ready
- It is easy to deploy TIBCO ActiveSpaces on cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments. You can easily build TIBCO ActiveSpaces into microservices with container deployment products such as Docker.