What is the COM+ Server

The COM+ Server for Déjà Vu is used to facilitate the use of a Translation Memory or Termbase over a Local Area Network, and also the sharing of these resources among several translators using Déjà Vu.

While it is possible to store Déjà Vu databases on a shared location and access them over the network even without the use of the COM+ Server, doing so is not recommended, and is likely to cause problem down the line, for the following reasons:

• When opening a Translation Memory or a Termbase that is stored on a remote location, Déjà Vu operates under the assumption that these resources will exist on a “fast” storage subsystem. A local area network, even one that is generally fast, will have significantly larger average seek times than a local hard drive, and this will affect performance significantly.
• Having more than one users accessing a Translation Memory or Termbase at the same time. The Jet Database Engine, which Déjà VU uses to handle all its databases (projects, Translation Memories and Termbases), allows several users to write from and write to a database at the same time. However, Déjà Vu operates under the assumption that only one user will be accessing any database at a time. This means that if something happens as a result of 2 people attempting to perform conflicting operations on a database (for example, 2 users write different translation for the same segment) Déjà Vu will not be ready to deal with that situation. This could result in text being overwritten, data corruption and crashes.

The COM+ Server solves these problems. The COM+ Server acts as an intermediary between Déjà Vu and the Translation Memories or Termbases being used. It offers better performance over the network because when you use the COM+ server a lot less data is exchanged over the network: instead of reading the whole database over the network, Déjà Vu sends a question to the COM+ Server, and the COM+ Server sends back the answer. The hard work involved in searching the database is done by the COM+ Server on databases that are stored locally, so the problem I described above with reading a database over the network doesn’t happen.

The COM+ Server also allows several users to access a database at the same because, when you use the COM+ Server, only one application, the COM+ Server, is accessing the database. The COM+ Server takes requests from different users, queues them, and then processes them in order.

How to install the COM+ Server

You can find the Installation Guide for the version of the COM+ Server appropriate for your version of Déjà Vu here.