ISAM has been the foundation of our data management philosophy for over 40 years.
Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) is a record-oriented database architecture that permits extremely fast access to data. ISAM data is organized into records stored in data files. Separate index files are used to store key-values (NoSQL) that identify each record, along with pointers that locate the corresponding record in the data file. The index makes it possible to retrieve individual records quickly without having to search an entire data set. A “key-value pair” is simply two pieces of information: (1) an identifier that will be used to uniquely find the pair and (2) a second piece of information: the value. Think of the key as a unique identifier and the value as a block of associated information. Going back to our accounts payable system above, consider this system vendor database: |
Vendor Number |
Vendor Name |
Vendor Address |
---|---|---|
1000 |
ACME Company |
101 Main Street, St Louis, MO 65101 |
1001 |
XYZ Corporation |
102 main street, Kansas City, KS 64105 |
If one of the indexes is over Vendor Number, then the “key” is 1000 for the first record, and the remaining contents “ACME Company” and “101 Main Street, St Louis, MO 65101” make up the “value” component. |
In practical terms, there isn’t any. You can think of a key-value store as a fundamental component in the implementation of an ISAM database. While “key-value” is more popular in the NoSQL space, there are many environments, such as COBOL, where the term “ISAM” (and it’s close parallel, “VSAM”) are still widely used. If this is you or your background, you can rest assured that our FairCom DB key-value store has derived its roots from ISAM. Therefore, anywhere you see “key-value” on our web pages and literature, you can replace this with the term “ISAM” as you understand it. |
The record-oriented ISAM database architecture has been around for many years, but unlike many of our competitors, FairCom has continuously evolved and improved the fundamental concepts. FairCom’s ISAM implementation has a rich API of over 250 function calls that empower the application developer to obtain precise control over their data access needs. This control, and the smaller code footprint of an ISAM implementation, provides opportunities for driving exceptional performance when compared to traditional relational systems by avoiding relational processing overhead. When comparing FairCom DB NoSQL to other NoSQL solutions, keep the following points in mind:
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