What is Axisbase?
Axisbase is a database system that you can use to track whatever kind of information your business deals with. For example, it could track sales made on a web site, perform order fulfillment from your office, maintain inventory lists, or maintain any other structured information.
NOTE: Axisbase is no longer being maintained; the last update was January 2011. You are still free to download and use it, however, and there are no license fees.
Axisbase is comparable to other personal/office database tools like Filemaker and Microsoft Access, and it is also a database server like MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server. Because it contains both parts, Axisbase can accomplish similar feats to that of the new breed of on-line tools like WebOffice; however, Axisbase is not used through a browser and there is no monthly fee!
The download is free, unlimited and fully featured, so you can install it on every desktop in the organization. Find on-line documentation here.
Desktop AND Server!
Axisbase presents a paradigm shift that combines the desktop tool with a server. Traditionally there are two choices for data applications: Either you have to use desktop or locally connected applications like spreadsheets or Microsoft Access, or you put the data on a database connected to a web server (such as MySQL or SQL Server) and hand-code a web application for handling that data. It is common to maintain data in two places because of this disconnect.
Axisbase allows you to store the data on an internet-visible server AND manipulate it just like locally stored data. You can develop a web application that connects to the same database as well. This gives you the best of both worlds.
Do More With Less
The innovative design goals of Axisbase drive down the complexity of developing custom applications.
For administrators:
- Centralized storage and backups eliminate data loss from the desktop.
- No license fees.
For end users:
- Easy and fast installation, and easy to get started.
- Work from home or the office without copying files.
- Simple databases can be set up with no technical expertise.
For programmers:
You won’t spend as much time on the traditional complexities of database programming because Axisbase does a lot of it for you.
- Axisbase is extensible with programming in several ways, so you can introduce unlimited functionality while also leveraging Axisbase out of the box. (See the programming model.)
- Axisbase is built on Microsoft .NET, and you extend it using .NET – ensuring a long product life and the support of the large .NET libraries.
- For an application targetted to a web site, you can skip the administrative interface, because that can be done directly in the Axisbase client. For example, for a company that wants to publish its inventory on-line, they can work with their inventory in the Axisbase client and the web server can display the latest changes.
- References (foreign keys) don’t require any special treatment. For example if you have a Sale type that references a Customer type, the customer’s name will show in the sale record (not the number), and the user will be able to select the customer by name. (But the storage is correctly denormalized.)
- Indexes are created and destoyed automatically.
- Parameter inputs are handled automatically, so you can provide the end users with the ability to search by a number of different criteria. You don’t have to build an input screen or program the query.
- See the programming model for more details.