CD-ROM updater
Product: SoftCD 2.0
Supplier: i0ra
Tel: 01635 254584
Web: www.iora .com
Price: From £23 per client for 1000 clients to £200 per client (minimum 25 clients). Annual maintenance is 15% of software price (prices exc. VAT)

This remarkable piece of technology will be of particular interest to organisations with scattered workforces that depend on a supply of constantly changing data. Do your salesmen, for example, rely on an electronic catalogue of products that's held on a read-only CD-ROM? What happens when a product specification, or a price, is changed? How is that information updated?

CD-ROMs hold up to 640MB of data. When the DVD standard comes into general use, this could increase to 17GB or more. Until now the only reliable way to update information held on CD-ROMs has involved the despatch of new disks. It hasn't been practical to transmit the data electronically because the bandwidth limitations of Internet and dial-up networks makes them too slow. The process would take far too long and be prohibitively expensive. I0ra has changed all that.

SoftCD uses innovative technology to compare the contents of two versions of the data held on a CD-ROM and assemble a compact file containing just the differences between them. This file can be transmitted by e-mail, across the Web, via the company WAN or even by post on a floppy disk. If it's downloaded across the Internet, the time taken to download the updated information is reduced by a factor of up to 100 when compared with the time it would take to download the uncompressed, amended data in full. The receiving computer stores the amendment files on its hard disk.

Using a technology called ‘File System Interception' the amendment file is then read, in conjunction with the data stored on the original CD-ROM, to make the information held on the CD-ROM appear to have been updated. Data of any sort, including video and audio files, can be updated in this way.

As well as electronic catalogues, this product has distinct possibilities for use with CDs containing reference information, financial data, encyclopaedias and any read-only database. It can be used not only in the marketing and sales areas, but also in connection with the support, training and development of remote workforces, education and distance learning, and electronic commerce. It's ideal for any area in which CD-ROMs would be perfect if the information on them could be kept up to date.

SoftCD Publisher (used to generate the CD-ROM amendment files) and the Client software (resident on the client machine) are easy to use, the client software being almost invisible to the user.

The Design Council awarded SoftCD Millennium Product Status in the awards announced by Trade and Industry Secretary, Peter Mandelson, on 2 November.

Originally published December 1998 in Toshiba Unplugged
Written by Steve Cotterell (http://www.scotrix.com)