The Advantage Database Server is a feature-rich product, providing you with the tools and capabilities necessary to create sophisticated, high-performance database applications. Nonetheless, with each new release the Advantage team manages to add features, enhancements, and performance improvements that further Advantage's position as the best database for small to medium-sized applications.

This section is specifically intended for developers who are already familiar with earlier versions of Advantage. Here you will find brief descriptions of features added in versions 8.0 and 8.1 (8.1 is a free update from 8.0). And if you are not yet using Advantage, this section provides a glimpse of the features you can expect when you adopt Advantage for your own application development.

This information is not intended to provide a complete list of the new and enhanced features introduced in Advantage 8.1. For a complete list, please refer to the Advantage help. Furthermore, many of the features listed here are described in much greater detail later in this book. For example, Chapter 9 is devoted to a thorough description of online backups.