Hidden within many Genius applications are routines which allow them to communicate with a wide variety of databases and file systems. To the user of the applications, these are completely transparent; to the developer they are essential and simple to use. The Genius Linker allows applications to read and write shared information in any number of different and dissociated data sources as well as native file systems.
This gives access to common database engines (such as Oracle and Ingres), manufacturing, CRM and human resource packages and also allows access via the standard ODBC interface to many more databases, spreadsheets and third party systems. Some implementations of ODBC have proved to be notoriously poor in functionality and performance and in these instances we have produced direct Genius Linker interfaces which have allowed significant improvements in performance for mission critical systems.
To the general user, the underlying source of the data is hidden and there is no specific requirement to allow access to their data. The data definitions are stored within the Genius data dictionary, so that all fields and record layouts appear similar regardless of their underlying storage format. In some instances, the Genius Linker modules can be enhanced to perform "on-the-fly" decoding of coded or packed values and provide users with convenient descriptive values without the need for lookup tables or complex conversion routines.
Some legacy or bespoke applications do not provide the generic gateway into their data sources provided by ODBC. In these instances Genius Linker can and does still offer a solution. The underlying design of the Genius Linker component allows us to provide low level interfaces where none has previously been available. This has offered our customers the opportunity to access data from their mainstream applications and link this with systems such as third party payroll packages, ad-hoc files and external data streams.
Relational, hierarchical and network databases are all supported via this mechanism and currently include: ORACLE RDBMS, ORACLE Rdb, DBMS-32, INGRES, CA-DB and (on Windows) generic ODBC. Database applications packages including MANMAN, PROTOS, TROPOS, CODA-IAS and CYBORG are also supported.
The Genius Linker also provides a solution to a common desktop issue by allowing data output and reports to be directly saved in a variety of standard PC formats. Spreadsheets can be created in Excel, Lotus, CSV, DIF and other variations. XML and HTML output is provided along with common word processing format files which can be used to facilitate mail merge, labelling and similar operations.