Executives at Burlingame, Calif.-based Ants Software Inc. said the company's approach avoids the need to lock rows of data, as most databases do, while maintaining data integrity. That enables increased transaction speeds, especially in online transaction processing (OLTP) environments where bottlenecks may occur when many users try to read or write to the same data fields at the same time.

'Everybody else's database is based on refinements to '70s and '80s database technology,' said Ken Ruotolo, chief financial officer of Burlingame, Calif.-based Ants. 'We come at it from a very different angle.'

Version 3.4 of Ants Data Server announced Monday adds compatibility with the MySQL and Informix databases. The software was already compatible with the data types, functions and SQL extensions of popular databases such as Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server, Sybase and Oracle's recently acquired TimesTen in-memory database. That makes it easy for prospective customers to migrate to Ants Data Server, said Ruotolo.

Ants was originally founded in the 1980s as a parallel supercomputing company. After that market died, the company lay dormant for more than a decade before being restarted in 1999 by investors who pumped in US$33 million to reapply the company's patents toward a database product.

Ants began selling its database late last year, and sales remain small. In its most recent quarter ending June 30, the company had just $135,000 in sales, with $1.98 million in losses.