jLaBase Project

jLaBase is a database environment that can be used in many different ways. It is a set of tools and web applications designed for end-users, not developers. So, it is not necessary to known anything about SQL, Java or other programming language. Otherwise we recommend some knowledge about network and database administration.

This platform interacts through servers, each server contains an standalone structure with its entites, users and services. There should some dedicated servers and some others not, this is because jLaBase Platform can organize a client/server or a P2P network. It is recommended to use a LDAP service directory with jLaBase beacuse each table inside the platform has its own set of access rules like a directory or a file has inside an Unix system, access to data is granted only by users registered with that privileges. jLaBase Platform defines its own Naming Contexts where any object can locate a database entity (another -persistent- object) by its name.

In a client/server network we split all the data and resources in different servers. By this way we define the database model in a hierarchical structure. Each server is a standalone working unit, clients connected to it don't need to fetch data outside, the servlet engine does it for them. In this environment we found different working units (ZONES) compounded by a server and some client machines, each zone contains private data but nothing about public data. The public data is stored in alone servers (ISLANDS), this data is shared by all servers inside the domain and can lefted to public access (if wanted). jLaBase Platform can also work with a web server (like Apache HTTPD) and offer services over Internet, in this case, the server that is listening web requests is the HEAD of the platform.

In a P2P network we imagine a world where home users share its data with some other users. This is a virtual community of users where each one connects to other. This is a very scalable universe because a single user of a community can act like a "bridge" to other communities. In a community of this kind we can also do downloads and uploads as common community but with the difference that there is a single server, there are a lot of them!

Users don't need to update their database engine to one supported by jLaBase. jLaBase can works with any database engine and its platform can communicate entities stored in different database engines!