Case Studies

Searching for a True Master-Master MySQL Synchronization Solution

By: Christopher Greimes, CEO

Allied Titanium, Inc. Lewes, DE, United States

Allied Titanium, Inc. is a cutting edge manufacturer of titanium products. At the center of our operation are MySQL databases that house the images, CAD files and other data for the 13,000+ products we produce.

Connected to the Internet is a high speed MySQL server that allows our sales reps, managers, factories and customers to both add and retrieve data via web browsers. Obviously, the data on this server is in a continuous state of flux.

For our home office, another MySQL server is connected to a local Intranet where the hi-resolution images, CAD files and other data created during product development are entered. The data on this server is accessed via both web browsers and Microsoft Access. The data is only in a state of flux during normal local office hours.

Some of our customers around the globe also operate Microsoft SQL servers and MySQL servers that connect via the internet to our 24/7 high speed server in order to continuously keep their data up to date.

As you can imagine, traditional database replication will not work in our business model because we are spread around the globe and there isn't a point in time where the data alterations can be halted. In effect, all of the servers in our architecture are masters because new data is being added and existing data is being updated at multiple locations simultaneously, so this precludes database replication as well.

Until we found Pervasync, synchronizing all of these servers was a phenomenal task fraught with both error and fear. We talked to provider after provider and all said the same thing, "Master - Master synchronization isn't feasible or practical." They recommended that we change our entire business structure to enable either the implementation of database replication or switch to using a single server.

Faced with a horrendous synchronization task every morning and night, we took a hard look at toning down our aggressive business model, but held our ground for three reasons:

First, speed. Trying to build a single database server at one location that can serve up to the entire world is expensive and no matter how fast or big it is, the data still has to flow around the globe, which means access to the system will be slow for some users, no matter what you do.

The second reason is redundancy, knowing that the data our entire company relies upon is duplicated securely at multiple locations with the sync frequency controlled by us allows me to sleep peacefully at night.

The final reason is customer service. Many of our customers already have database servers and for us to tell them that in order to do business with us they must create and maintain a new replicated MySQL database on their site (which they can't even enter data into) is totally unacceptable.

Many of the other synchronization software providers claim that their software will do Master - Master synchronization. Upon digging deeper (In some cases buying their software!), their idea of master - master synchronization was to compare rows and rows of changed data manually, choosing the data from the server that we wanted to sync to the other server in table-like forms.

One of the areas that is unusual in our system, compared to many others, is that we are storing hi-resolution images in our MySQL database that must be synced across the globe as well. This means that any synchronization software that relies on reading the data storage size in every column in order to determine what has changed will be incredibly slow, something we found out the hard way.

As far as we know at this time, Pervasync is the only true Master - Master synchronization system available for MySQL. Once set up and initially synced, it is blazingly fast. To see Pervasync in action, visit www.alliedtitanium.com.

P.S. Pervasync's customer service has been absolutely stellar!

Synchronizing SaaS Based Application's Web DB with Local DB in Hospitals

By: ComplyMD,

Birmingham, AL, United States

ComplyMD is progressive facilitator of encounter documentation for the three key participants in surgical care: Physicians, Patients and Facilities. ComplyMD provides workflows to optimize the physician’s mind-share, provide personalized intelligence to efficiently document procedures in real-time compliance and facilitate accurate diagnosis for fair reimbursement. ComplyMD Surgeon Notes™ shifts the encounter documentation process from unstructured dictation and into an enhanced, rich-data creation.

Based in Birmingham Alabama, partnered with world-class medical providers and facilities, ComplyMD is radically shortening the time for surgical documentation to be closed as the invasive procedures are closed. The secret to ComplyMD is not really a secret but rather a Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, solution accessed from a secured web browser in the Operating Rooms with a hosted service in St. Louis and, in some cases, located on-site at the hospital.

Currently, ComplyMD has three medical facilities performing over 1,000 surgical cases a month in production through the solution and ComplyMD has begun a regional sales campaign to secure dozens more facilities in 2010. The compelling business service that ComplyMD offers is that physicians, regardless of which surgical center or hospital they operate, and their office team can see the workflow of all of their practice’s surgical cases, whereas the hospitals who license ComplyMD can manage their surgical cases. Effectively, a matrix relationship of physicians and facilities can access, edit, and move operative documentation efficiently through their respective workflows while better assuring compliance and better capturing diagnosis and procedures to claim full reimbursement quickly.

The architectural challenge that ComplyMD encountered was the reality that some hospitals do not have the internet bandwidth to support the data transmission load expected of a patient-care application delivered as a SaaS. A reasonable approach was for the facilities that had these data transmission bottlenecks that ComplyMD could place a local server on their network. This would have our latest software and the full production database for the physicians who have privileges at that facility. The unknown, was how to synchronize the data from the hospital to the www server and then scale this approach to two facilities, then to ten facilities and onto however many facilities we would ultimately distribute a local server.

Our engineering team felt strong enough to build a streamline synchronization solution that focused on the core entities that needed to be shared between hospitals and physician offices. With the ComplyMD solution built in Ruby on Rails, RoR, persisting data in MySQL, the solution felt tantalizing simple. It wasn’t. After missing important client deliverables and key non-functional requirements on uptime and data transmission, the Engineering Team looked into data synchronization solutions.

To our joy and satisfaction we found Pervasync. Here was a robust solution, built for MySQL that quickly meet our implementation and configuration expectations of being seamless. Our teams piloted the synchronization of two hospitals and our globally hosted solution and within the month had the solution managing production data for dozens of surgical cases. The stability provided by Pervasync for the physicians to see the patient surgical information from the convenience of the hospital, their office or even their iPhone took a mission critical issue off of ComplyMD’s Product Team’s Focus and allowed us to begin the design of our next generation product for release.

The Chief Operations Officer, Jim Orrison, had been an Oracle specialist and consultant. His experience included synchronizing production-grade data stores across an enterprise; he knew that with the right specialist, enough patience and enough money, synchronization could be successful. With Pervasync, our RoR development team, with Pervasync support, within a month and at a low operational cost solved this problem. Jim says that “Custom application development is risky and expensive when done right. In healthcare solutions, data management not only has to be done right, but has to be pristine. With Pervasync, we have exceeded our non-functional requirements of seamless data access through facilities and significantly reduced the risks of any data loss. I am very pleased with the product, the service and results that Pervasync's team has built. I sleep much better at night knowing Pervasync is facilitating our database synchronization efforts.”

Synchronizing Mobile Sales Applications so They Can Work Online and Offline

By: Neetu Goyal

Septagon Softwares Pvt. Ltd, Hyderabad, India

We are Septagon Software Pvt Ltd., from Hyderabad, India. We sell and deploy ERP software for Agro and Non-agro based rural Industries of India. Just to name a few, Rice Mills, Cotton Ginning, and Transportation. We were looking for Sync software that needs to sync our CRM database with our sales team for them to work both online and offline. After a few weeks of research (Eureka!) we finally found a tool (Pervasync).

Though we were Business Development guys with almost zero technical knowledge, with the help of their (Pervasync) support team (quickly and instantly), needless to say we deployed the tool in two days. We tested the tool and amazingly it worked like a Knife through Butter.

Our non-technical Sales force will just need to press a button and the Job is done. Pervasync server-client integration is a state-of-the-art product with none of its kind.

If we were to rate this tool we would rate it 9 on 10.