System Changes

There have been a lot of changes since PhonePad 4.  Almost everything has been rewritten to improve usability and performance, and to implement new features.

Everything to do with the database side of things has changed.  We have completely replaced the previous database engine with a new high performance engine.  That doesn't mean it's a newer version of the previous engine - it's a totally new engine with better performance and greater capacity and capabilities.

In PhonePad 4, the PhonePad 4 Server (DBServer) provided little more than connectivity to the database.  It didn't matter whether your were connecting directly to the PhonePad database (Local Mode) or through the PhonePad 4 Server (Remote Mode) - all of the processing was done on the workstations.  

With PhonePad 5 this has all changed.  The PhonePad 5 Server has taken over most of the processing tasks previously done by the workstations.

For example with PhonePad 4, if you sent a message to 15 people the workstation would have to send each of the 15 messages.  This could potentially take 15x the amount of time it would take to send a message to 1 person, tying up PhonePad until all messages were sent.

In PhonePad 5, the workstation only sends 1 message.  The PhonePad 5 Server takes care of sending the rest of them, freeing up PhonePad on the workstation.

PhonePad 5 Server can perform many automated background tasks 24/7 without users even being aware of them.  This was not possible with PhonePad 4.