Sheerpower includes an integrated high-speed database engine ARS (Advanced Record System). In addition, Sheerpower also interfaces to any ODBC compliant database engine.

ARS is an advanced database engine that focuses on performance scalability. ARS easily handles database tables in excess of a billion rows (records). There is virtually no limit to either the number of columns (record size) or key size with ARS. Over 200 keys can be attached to any given table. The size of each table is limited only by the maximum Window's file size. In addition, there is virtually no limit to the number of tables per database.

ARS features extremely high speed sequential, keyed, and random access to database information. In addition, ARS is optimized for client/server applications through the use of high performance memory resident shared data.

ARS includes features such as:

• ability to change any key -- including primary key
• very high-speed access -- 50,000 records per second is typical
• huge data record size support, huge file sizes
• All ARS data is dynamically cached in RAM memory for optimum performance. For example, looking up a unique ID number from a table of over 500 million IDs takes less than a 10th of a second the first time, and less than one ten-thousandth of a second each additional time. That is over 10,000 ID lookups per second.

ARS includes a trade-secret, high-performance, shared-access (locking) system that efficiently handles multi-user access to all ARS data.

ARS is very memory efficient and has a very small footprint. This means that ARS can be used even in memory-limited devices such as PDAs or even embedded systems such as phones or "smart buildings". ARS doesn't require any special runtime libraries and is "thread safe" for the development of highly-scalable systems.

ARS also includes utilities to backup ARS tables in real time -- no need to stop or check-point applications in order to back them up and safe-keep the data. All data is synchronized and reliably backed up by ARS even while database tables are being written to. This allows for true 24/7 non-stop applications.

ARS supports many different key-types for fast data retrieval -- and additional key-types can easily be added as needed for specialized applications. For example, one type of key is a reverse text key. This key-type allows for locating a specific file type (such as a MOVIE or JPEG image) instantly.