These advances, in turn, mean users now can run sophisticated local applications and enter, store and manipulate data. The vendor is targeting PointBase Micro at cell phone makers and other small device vendors, and especially an array of software developers and resellers that will now be able to write and install Java programs on wireless phones. By contrast, phones that use the Wireless Application Protocol browser require a continuous connection to servers that host WAP content. Once the connection is lost, the WAP phone can only be used for voice - or as a paperweight. Calif. PointBase Micro can run on any client that uses the J2ME or Java2 Standard Edition APIs, libraries and virtual machines.
Pricing is per client, with volume discounts available.
On the other end of the data connection is PointBase Server, a full SQL relational database. A range of computers running the server product can be interconnected to share and update data using the PointBase UniSync software. Company executives say PointBase Server 4.0 offers comparable performance to such widely used databases as Microsoft SQL Server. One engineering change is more efficient algorithms in the database's object model. To process a transaction, for example, the database creates and destroys a series of objects, but each of these actions pays a performance price.