Reliability and Breadth

Banks, colleges, insurance companies, hospitals and other traditionally conservative institutions routinely use post-relational technology. The technology can be found in everything from libraries to lumber yards.

Training

The learning curve for these systems is relatively small. Given the programming overlap between the compiled language embedded in the systems and newer languages, such as PHP, some business executives have said they can get a new employee up to a productive level in a few weeks.

A casual poll of attendees at the International Spectrum Conference indicated that many of them had extensive business knowledge but little IT training when they started. Many credited the easier syntax of post-relational queries as an asset in shortening the learning curve.

Query

Post-relational systems push their equivalent of the Join, called a Translate, into the schema, making it easier to write queries and more difficult to incorrectly associate data due to poor understanding of the schema. While the tools available to work with SQL are far more extensive and varied, the underlying query language in post-relational systems is easier to master, attendees said.

Charles Barouch has spent more than 25 years as a business and computer consultant. He splits his time between Key Ally, a consulting organization, and the New York Botanical Garden, where he does Web and data integration work. He can be reached at Results@KeyAlly.com.