(MultiValue + LINKAR) does what exactly?
"LINKAR... to use or not to use ?" is just one question, but the one Elkie Holland of Prospectus IT Recruitment wanted to answer is: "What is LINKAR all about ?" So Elkie Holland caught up with Joseba Real de Asua, LINKAR Product Director from Kosday in Spain, to find out more about this product for the MultiValue market.
ELKIE: Hi Joseba, thank you for joining me to tell me a bit more about LINKAR from Kosday. So, what is Linkar ?
JOSEBA: LINKAR is a connector between many development environments and MultiValue databases. You can install it in Windows, Linux and MacOS. By now it works with QM, jBase, D3, Universe and Unidata. And it has client libraries for almost any development environment, .NET, Java, .NET Core, Python, Nodejs, php, Perl, Ruby, Xamarin, Mono, MS Office, MS PowerShell...
ELKIE: So what exactly can people do with LINKAR ?
JOSEBA: LINKAR connects with your MV databases easily and efficiently and allows you to centralize the connections and share the same lines to optimize them. You can develop your applications without thinking about the database. LINKAR does all that thinking for you. Basically, LINKAR is a suite of components that facilitates efficient connectivity to MultiValue Databases.
ELKIE: What would you say are the 2 most important commercial advantages of using LINKAR ?
JOSEBA: By using LINKAR SERVER, which works with many MultiValue Database platforms, you are optimizing DBMS license usage. This obviously can save money. Client apps use LINKAR CLIENT libraries, with bindings for popular languages, to interact with the database through LINKAR SERVER. So basically, with the LINKAR suite of components, client-side interfaces are written with a variety of programming languages, to connect to a variety of MV servers.
ELKIE: So which MultiValue variants does it work with ?
JOSEBA: OpenQM on Windows, Linux and MacOS, D3 on Windows and Linux, UniVerse on Windows and Linux, UniData on Windows and Linus, and also jBASE on Windows and Linus.
ELKIE: Do you have any add-ons / plugins for LINKAR ?
JOSEBA: Yes, we have PowerBI plugin. Creates a straight connection between Microsoft PowerBI and your Pick MultiValue Dagabase. Wihthout web services, without any other program requirement. LINKAR does it for you.
LINKAR is currently in a certification process with Microsoft but in a few months, PowerBI will include natively a “Pick MultiValue Style” data source. Currently we need to include it manually to PowerBI.
ELKIE: This sounds all great and interesting, but that normally means a hefty price tag. Is this a very expensive product?
JOSEBA: LINKAR is very affordable. There is a free Lite license (only one client and one concurrent session) and a PRO License (no client limit and 45€ + 11€ year per session)
ELKIE: If someone would like a demo of your product or to know more about it, what should they do ?
JOSEBA: We will happily have a video conference at a time to suit them. Alternatively, they could read more here: http://www.linkarmv.com/index-en.html
They could also follow our blog, https://www.kosday.com/blog/
ELKIE: Thank you to Joseba for telling me more about LINKAR. Please feel free to contact Joseba directly on jra@kosday.com.