CIPAL’s New Caché-Based Library System is Ready to Take on the World

Key Benefits

• The Web
• Cost-effectiveness
• Rapid Application Development

When Brocade was officially launched at the end of May 2002, a new and powerful contender in the world of library systems was born. Its major strengths: an easy-to-use Web interface and an ability to cope with all sorts of data, both structured and unstructured, by using InterSystems’ high-performance Caché database system. “We want the world to know that Brocade is not merely a new library system, but a whole new concept that could be used for any application that deals with document management,” says Willy Moermans, director of applications at CIPAL .

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) center CIPAL is a familiar name in Flanders’ public IT landscape. For over two decades, several public bodies and private organizations have entrusted their automation projects to CIPAL. CIPAL has been involved in ICT projects for administrative, technical and management applications. It also develops software and e-government solutions for public authorities, including multimedia applications, Internet, and intranet implementations. CIPAL currently employs around 700 people with offices in Geel, Diepenbeek, Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen, and Aalst, generating an annual turnover in excess of 100 million euros.

“When CIPAL was created January 1, 1980, it had 36 associates; now it has 176, covering the entire Flemish region.” says General Manager Arthur Philips. “They include the Flemish government, provincial governments, municipalities, social welfare centers, and inter-urban organizations. CIPAL has developed its proper wide-area network, Ciport, linking the local community networks with the provincial networks, enabling not only the mutual exchange of information, but also direct communication with higher government bodies. CIPAL offers assistance, training, and consultancy to the parties involved, both as a service center and as a full-blown partner for their automation projects.”

"Once you have a database like Cache
with its powerful integrated development environment,
you can go in any direction"

- Willy Moermans
Director of Applications

Library Systems

One of the areas CIPAL has been actively engaged in is library systems. “We have long-standing experience in this field,” says Arthur Philips, “Nearly half of all the public libraries in the Antwerp and Limburg provinces are using our software. The library world is changing very quickly, increasingly the libraries are co-operating and want to be linked, so we clearly saw the need for a new application that could cope with all that.”

In addition, the technical demands were changing too. According to Moermans, “In the old days, all you had to deal with in a library system was structured data, and that task was perfectly handled by databases like DB2 and Oracle. Nowadays, you have to manage unstructured data too, and that calls for a totally different type of database. It’s no longer just a matter of managing lists of books, now we can also manage complex text descriptions of items from CDs to precious museum pieces. Sure, we could have added just another database to cope with the unstructured data, but using several different databases at the same time was really asking for trouble.” As CIPAL had close partnerships with a number of universities, it explained its problem to the University of Antwerp (UA). The UA made it very clear that the classical relational database could not handle what they wanted and so recommended Caché from InterSystems.

“When we decided to accept their advice, the choice was actually based on a number of factors,” Moermans explains. “One of the most important was the track record of the product. We did not want an exotic product that still has to prove itself, without any support from a reputable company. We also did not want to sacrifice the productivity of our developers. Instead, we needed good, solid development tools to go with the database. Plus, it had to be powerful, with a fast response time, capable of using XML and other new, Internet-related technologies.”

Versatile and Flexible

Caché was able to deliver all that and more. Brocade, as the new library system is called, is a complete set of software components allowing libraries to develop and deploy bibliographical and documentary databases, automate administrative tasks, and offer extra electronic services to the end users. It uses Caché’s object database and rapid application development technology. The applications are all Web-based, with dynamically-generated HTML screens and static forms accessed using a standard Web browser. Brocade has been developed for use in a UNIX environment, currently for Sun Solaris and Linux, but it will soon run on other platforms as well: Brocade will thus be accessible on less powerful, but cost-effective Intel-based servers, too.

Brocade can be used as a local library system but it really shines when it is deployed over a network. Several libraries can then combine a common catalog with their local library system, irrespective of their hardware or software platform. “This is a very important benefit,” says Moermans. “Each of the libraries uses its own hardware infrastructure, so any new software application has to take that into account because we don’t want to upset their traditional way of working. At the same time, we want them to be able to take advantage of the new features offered in Brocade like the browser-based access and the collaboration capabilities.”

Brocade is used by the libraries of the Anet Bibliotheek network and in a number of pilot projects. CIPAL is helping existing libraries using the CIBIS library system to replace it with Brocade. One of those pilot groups is the Library School of Ghent, which selected Brocade because of its versatility and particularly because it allows the user to tailor the system to its own needs without having to resort to programming. The school is also going to use the software as part of its educational package.

Of course, a solution like Brocade continues to evolve. “Our agreement with the University of Antwerp specifies that they continue to develop the basic software, and that CIPAL develops additional modules geared to the specific needs of its customers,” says Moermens. “We also take care of the commercial aspect, the marketing and selling of the product. We have created a separate project group with people from both the university and CIPAL to look beyond the standard public and academic library requirements and see what other opportunities are out there for such a concept.” The new opportunities are quickly becoming reality. The city of Antwerp, the Antwerp public libraries, the University of Antwerp, Telepolis and CIPAL signed an agreement to create a metropolitan library network in Antwerp, based on Brocade.

Other Environments

Other document-management tasks like museum collections could easily be handled by a system like Brocade. “Once you have a database like Caché with its powerful integrated development environment, you can go in any direction,” Moermans adds. “We already knew Caché from applications in healthcare, but still it was very reassuring to see that InterSystems has kept on improving Caché all the time. One of the major strengths of Caché and Brocade is that all input can be done from the browser interface, which enables very fast adjustments to be made. We also found out that the Internet-connection overheads are very low: even an ordinary link over the public telephone network generated very fast response times. This is a key point, as more and more people will want to access their libraries remotely, from home, or from public information terminals in their community.”

In the meantime, CIPAL is already looking beyond its traditional Flemish region. Together with the University of Antwerp, it is contemplating potential markets abroad. “We are convinced that Brocade is at least as good as the major international products out there on the market today,” Arthur Philips claims, “and we intend to prove that.”