1. What is Alchemy?

2. What is Alchemy? Alchemy is a repository for unstructured data
Designed for high performance access to information from any source
Resembles a database, but provides significant functionality a database cannot deliver

3. Alchemy Repository vs. Relational Databases
Alchemy stores files in their native format; file types remain untouched
Alchemy text files are automatically compressed between 8:1 and 10:1
Index compressions are significant, resulting in faster search response times
Alchemy does not require an additional database license
Alchemy can handle over 250 file types

4. Alchemy Repository vs. Relational Databases (continued)
Alchemy can build portable repositories
Alchemy provides for annotations on images via sticky notes
Alchemy allows for customized template designs and indexing methods
Alchemy provides for read only clients on LANs/WANs as well as CD/DVD
Alchemy can split the ‘document’ repository into logical and physical pieces
Alchemy provides OCR capabilities

5. Alchemy Repository vs. Relational Databases (continued)
Full text indexing would kill performance on a relational database
Relational databases are tuned for transaction processing, not documents
If a relational database index fails, the entire application becomes unavailable