Geac offers integrated library software with Caché

Key Benefits

  • Transactional Multidimensional Data Model
  • High Performance
  • Openness
  • Scalability
  • Cost-effectiveness

While the Internet's popularity and accessibility has made it possible for people to buy just about anything over the Web, the one thing they couldn't do was extend the lending period of a library book. GEAC, a world leader in the development of library software, has eliminated this inconvenience with its Cache-based Vubis 4 Windows library system. Vubis 4 Windows includes a Web application -VubisWeb- that lets people reserve library materials online, as well as search on author, title, or category, participate in online research, and even suggest which titles the library should buy.

Another functionality of VubisWeb is the creation and maintenance of a user profile that recognizes a person's specific fields of interest and compiles a profile. The library can then send email to users promoting material that matches the users' profiles, thereby increasing traffic in the library. People therefore get the same feeling of recognition they would get from the shop attendant around the corner.

The ideas for new functionality in these library software packages come from Eric Conderaerts, product manager, Geac or from users, or from sales people that give presentations to customers or from user groups.

"...Caché [is] a fantastic tool. It is fast, scalable, performs very well and is really reliable.
[W]e have installed more than 400 systems."

- Eric Conderaerts
Product Manager
Geac

"Geac aims at producing a new version of Vubis 4 Windows every year and we have almost succeeded during the past decade," explains Eric Conderaerts, GEAC's product manager who has been working and programming with Caché for more than 10 years now. "I still find Caché a fantastic tool. It is fast, scalable, performs very well and is really reliable. We haven't encountered any large problems during the past 10 years, although we have installed more than 400 systems."

The platform-independence of Caché appeals to the developers "During the past 10 years we have spent at the utmost three months to rewrite codes to enable the package to run on different platforms such as Linux and NT. To us Caché is still the best choice," says an enthusiastic Conderaerts.

GEAC was founded 29 years ago by Canadian students. Today. well-known Dutch insurance companies, the Dutch Rail, and local authorities depend on GEAC's SMARTStream for their financial administration. Multinational such as Philips and Shell as well as Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf use GEAC's EnterPrise Server mainframe product.

In the Netherlands 2304 Vubis and Vubis 4 Windows licenses are sold, more than a third of the 6,113 total amount of licenses sold worldwide. In Belgium, more than 250 public libraries in Gent, Brugge, Hasselt, Brussels, and Charleroi use Vubis.