QM

A multivalue system by UK based Ladybridge Systems. It is low cost at 65 pounds per seat - about US$130 (July 2008 exchange rates), including upgrades to new releases for one year. The upgrade period can be extended to 10 years for a 25% extra charge. There are no mandatory maintenance contracts, support being charged on an hourly basis, so total cost of ownership is very much lower than some other products.

The correct name of the product is OpenQM but everyone abbreviates it to QM in general reference. There is a misbelief that the name QM refers to the commercial product and OpenQM to the open source version. The Open in OpenQM simply refers to the fact that there is an open source version available.

QM is based on the "Information style" multivalue model, very much like UniVerse, Unidata, etc but has options to select "Pick style" compatibility. The QMClient API gives access to QM from VB, C, Excel VBA, etc. AccuTerm is bundled with commercial licences.

QM uses a high performance, self-tuning dynamic hashed file system so there is no need for resizing. (Many QM users do not even have a system administrator.) The hashed file system is "binary clean" in that it has no reserved characters and can therefore store binary data such as bit mapped images. There are also "directory files" - much like UV's type 19 - for data exchange with the outside world.

QM has a very low resource usage both in memory and processor power. It is available for Windows (98 upwards), Linux, Mac (PowerPC and Intel) and Windows Mobile PDAs.

Low cost doesn't mean low quality or poor functionality. QM is highly stable and is taking multivalue into new areas such as Object Oriented programming. The QM user base has mostly come from migrations from other multivalue systems with D3 and UniVerse about equal at the time of writing.

For more information: http://www.openqm.com/