OfficeTalk 98 was designed with scalability and an open architecture in mind. For this reason, ODBC, the Open Database Connectivity standard, is adopted as the database platform. This means that OfficeTalk is capable of using different database engines, provided that they offer sufficient ODBC features.
OfficeTalk is supplied with a JET engine database as standard. This is the same database used by Microsoft Accessâ. It is a client only database which relies on a shared file system. The JET engine is designed for a maximum of 128 concurrent users. Client only databases, whilst being simple to set up and administer, can cause excessive network traffic when used in large workgroups. A more suitable consideration for larger workgroups is a client server database. In such an arrangement, all accesses to the database are made by the machine containing the database. Thus network traffic is considerably reduced.
OfficeTalk may be used with the Microsoft SQL Serverâ database engine or the Sybase SQL Anywhere database engine. This considerably extends the maximum workgroup size far beyond the size achievable using the JET engine.
Increased effective workgroup sizes may be achieved without turning to a more scalable database technology. By staying with the JET engine, you may instead split your workgroup into two or more smaller workgroups and connect them using the remote workgroup technology available in OfficeTalk.
OfficeTalk provides other features which increase the scalability of the product when using the client only JET engine database. For example, performing certain operations, such as periodically checking for new mail and checking for overdue tasks can dramatically increase network traffic as the number of users increases, since every machine will be regularly accessing the database over the network.
OfficeTalk provides a polling service which lets you dedicate one machine to polling the database, checking for important events on behalf of each and every user. For instance, when this machine finds new mail for a particular user, then that user is notified via a network message and only then will the relevant machine attempt to download the mail. Provided that the polling server is the same machine that holds the OfficeTalk database, then network traffic is almost eliminated.
Another scalability feature is available for workgroups with a slow local area network. Certain operations in OfficeTalk require more than one record to be written to the database, for example, when organising a meeting, an appointment is written into each person's diary in addition to sending a mail message. Certain operations, such as this, may be performed by a server machine rather than a client machine. This has the effect of reducing network traffic and reducing the time taken, by the client, to perform the operation.