A NoteWorthy win for Intersystems Cache’
A small Microsoft SQL Server-based medical application vendor called NoteWorthy Medical Systems bought a small Intersystems Cache’-based medical application vendor called Mars Medical Systems. NoteWorthy then decided to rebuild its product line on Intersystems Cache’. A press release ensued.*
*In general, my criticisms of Intersystems’ stealth marketing are beginning to be relaxed. On the other hand, if you want to be technical, I still haven’t actually talked with the company for years …
I spoke briefly with Mark Conner, founder of Mars Medical and now EVP of NoteWorthy, about why he so loves Cache’. (I asked what he disliked about the product; his response was an emphatic “Nothing”.) It basically boils down to two reasons:
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Mark thinks hierarchical data models are a great fit for medical applications. For example, the application’s UI (and local schema) look quite different depending on which particular complaints or diagnoses apply to particular patient visits.
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Cache’ just runs and runs w/o DBA intervention. Mark cited a figure of two support engineers for Mars Medical, supporting over 1,000 medical (largely group) practices, almost none of which have DBAs.
The latter feature is crucial to small ISVs selling application software to even smaller users, and is a big part of why Progress and Intersystems have large share in that market. More generally, it’s the most important and common technical advantage that mid-range database management systems generally enjoy versus the market leaders. (The other big advantage, of course, is pricing.)
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4 Responses to “A NoteWorthy win for Intersystems Cache’”
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Nice article – glad to see your views on Cache and InterSystems mellowing!
Two points. Firstly I think you’ll find that it’s Mark Conner, not Mike!
Secondly, regarding Mark’s on the aspects of Cache that are critical to its success within healthcare: it’s also interesting that these and other inherent features are exactly what the likes of Google and Amazon are now realising are required for the demands of the modern internet-scale database. See our blog at http://www.outoftheslipstream.com/node/124 for more on this.
Time, then, for the core Mumps database engine to be looked at much more closely by the industry?
Fixed Mike/Mark. Thanks!
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