Advice for some non-clients
Most of what I get paid for is in some form or other consulting. (The same would be true for many other analysts.) And so I can be a bit stingy with my advice toward non-clients. But my non-clients are a distinguished and powerful group, including in their number Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and most of the BI vendors. So here’s a bit of advice for them too.
Oracle. On the plus side, you guys have been making progress against your reputation for untruthfulness. Oh, I’ve dinged you for some past slip-ups, but on the whole they’ve been no worse than other vendors.’ But recently you pulled a doozy. The analyst reports section of your website fails to distinguish between unsponsored and sponsored work.* That is a horrible ethical stumble. Fix it fast. Then put processes in place to ensure nothing that dishonest happens again for a good long time.
*Merv Adrian’s “report” listed high on that page is actually a sponsored white paper. That Merv himself screwed up by not labeling it clearly as such in no way exonerates Oracle. Besides, I’m sure Merv won’t soon repeat the error — but for Oracle, this represents a whole pattern of behavior.
Oracle. And while I’m at it, outright dishonesty isn’t your only unnecessary credibility problem. You’re also playing too many games in analyst relations.
HP. Neoview will never succeed. Admit it to yourselves. Go buy something that can. Read more
Microstrategy technology notes
Earlier this week, Microstrategy made Mark LaRow available to talk about technology. The proximate reason was my recent mention of Microstrategy’s mobile BI emphasis, but we also touched on Microstrategy’s approach to in-memory business intelligence and some other subjects. We didn’t go into the depth of a similar conversation I had recently with Qlik Technologies, but I found it quite interesting even so.
Highlights of the in-memory BI discussion included:
- Microstrategy’s in-memory BI data structure is some kind of simple array, redundantly called a “vector array.” A more precise description was not available.
- While early versions of the capability have been around since 2002, Microstrategy’s in-memory BI capability only got serious with Microstrategy 9, which was released in Q1 of 2009. In particular, Microstrategy 9 was the first time in-memory BI had full security.
- Mark says a core reason for having their own in-memory BI is because Microstrategy has more smarts to predict which aggregates will or won’t be needed. Strictly speaking, that can’t be argued with. Vendors like Infobright would argue they come close enough to that ideal as to make little practical difference – but I’m also cheating by naming Infobright, which is particularly focused in that direction.
- Microstrategy in-memory BI compresses data by about 2X. Mark didn’t know which compression algorithm was used.
- The limitation on what’s in-memory is, of course, how much RAM you can fit on an SMP box. Microstrategy has seen up to ½ terabyte deployments.
- In-memory Microstrategy data structures are typically built during the batch window, for performance reasons. This is not, strictly speaking, mandatory, but I didn’t get a sense that Microstrategy was being used for much that resembled real-time business intelligence.
- Mark said Microstrategy has no interest in using solid-state memory to expand the reach of its in-memory BI. Frankly, if Microstrategy doesn’t change that stance, it’s in-memory BI capabilities are unlikely to stay significant for too many years.
Another key subject we discussed was Microstrategy’s view of dashboards. Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Data warehousing, Memory-centric data management, Microstrategy | Leave a Comment |
How should somebody teach themselves database and programming skills?
From time to time, I get in a conversation with somebody who is:
- Unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise desirous of having more commercial skills.
- Not a programmer, but desirous of having some technical skills.
- Astute enough to realize s/he will never be a serious techie.
I generally have two models in mind when guiding such a person:
- Analytics/business intelligence/stats.
- Website building.
Those are both useful skill sets for people who aren’t full-time techies, the first perhaps best for those who are more quantitative and big-company-friendly, the second perhaps better for the creative and/or rebellious types.
So what SPECIFICALLY should one guide them to do? My initial thoughts include: Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Microstrategy, MySQL, Open source | 22 Comments |
dbShards — a lot like an MPP OLTP DBMS based on MySQL or PostgreSQL
I talked yesterday w/ Cory Isaacson, who runs CodeFutures, makers of dbShards. dbShards is a software layer that turns an ordinary DBMS (currently MySQL or PostgreSQL) into an MPP shared-nothing ACID-compliant OLTP DBMS. Technical highlights included: Read more
| Categories: Code Futures and dbShards, Facebook, MySQL, OLTP, Parallelization, PostgreSQL | 2 Comments |
Kickfire unlikely to survive
Following up on a previous report of Kickfire’s troubles — a Kickfire customer tipped me off that Kickfire told him they’re selling their IP and engineers, and the Kickfire products will be discontinued.
At this time, I have no idea who the lucky buyer is.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Kickfire | 1 Comment |
False-positive alerts, non-collaborative BI, inaccurate metrics, and what to do about them
I’ve been hinting at some points for quite a long time, without really spelling them out in written form. So let’s fix that. I believe:
- “Push” alerting technology could be much more granular and useful, but is being held back by the problem of false positives.
- Metrics passed down from on high didn’t work too well in Stalin’s USSR, and haven’t improved sufficiently since.
- A large, necessary piece of the solution to both problems is a great engine for setting and modifying metrics definitions.
I shall explain. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Data warehousing, Microstrategy, Theory and architecture | 6 Comments |
Some interesting links
In no particular order: Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Fun stuff, Hadoop, Humor, In-memory DBMS, MapReduce, Memory-centric data management, Open source, Oracle, SAP AG | Leave a Comment |
Yet more on the GPL, WordPress themes, and the implications for MySQL storage engines
The debate I wrote about a few days ago over whether or not the WordPress theme called Thesis needed to be GPLed has been resolved in practice – it will be. More precisely, the parts that WordPress developers and the Free Software Foundation said need to be GPLed will be GPLed, while the rest won’t be, those parts being, in essence, the more “artistic” elements.
A consensus seems to have emerged that Thesis had actually copied beyond-fair-use amounts of WordPress code, which if true was Game Over. Beyond that, however, both sides of the strongly-viral-GPL debate scored some points. Read more
| Categories: MySQL, Open source | 5 Comments |
New insights into the GPL vs. MySQL storage engine debates
Around the time of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and hence MySQL, there was a lot of discussion as to whether MySQL’s GPL license could inhibit MySQL storage engine vendors from selling their products without MySQL code (e.g., with MySQL-fork front-ends). I argued No. Most people, however, seemed to think “Yes, and even if the matter isn’t clear, the threat of nasty lawyers creates enough FUD to be a practical market problem for the storage engine vendors.” Based on those concerns, I eventually took the position that Oracle should be inhibited for antitrust reasons from invoking its real or alleged GPL rights to mess with the MySQL storage engine vendors. Oracle’s agreement with the EU alleviated that concern, except that there was an annoying time limit on the alleviation.
Now a related can of worms has been opened in a related technology area — WordPress and WordPress themes. Since many bloggers use WordPress, this has gotten a lot of attention, and some interesting new insights have emerged. Read more
| Categories: MySQL, Open source, Oracle | 9 Comments |
Sybase SQL Anywhere
After Powersoft acquired Watcom and its famed Fortran compiler, marketing VP Tom Herring told me that the hidden jewel of the acquisition might well be a little DBMS, Watcom SQL. To put it mildly, Tom was right. Watcom SQL became SQL Anywhere; Powersoft was acquired by Sybase; Powersoft’s and Sybase’s main products both fell on hard times; Sybase built a whole mobile technology division around SQL Anywhere; and the whole thing just got sold for billions of dollars to SAP. Chris Kleisath recently briefed me on SQL Anywhere Version 12 (released to manufacturing this month), which seemed like a fine opportunity to catch up on prior developments as well.
The first two things to understand about SQL Anywhere is that there actually are three products:
- Sybase SQL Anywhere, a mid-range relational DBMS.
- Sybase UltraLite, a DBMS for mobile devices.
- Sybase MobiLink, a replication/sync tool.
and also that there are three main deployment/use cases:
- Generic desktop or server computers. This was the original market for SQL Anywhere.
- Laptop/handheld computers. This was the original growth market for SQL Anywhere. In particular, Siebel Systems’ first growth spurt was selling sales force automation software on laptop computers with SQL Anywhere underneath.
- Specialized devices. Earlier this decade, Sybase thought SQL Anywhere’s big growth market was on specialized devices. (I recall a video featuring some kind of automated pill dispensing machine for hospitals.)
| Categories: Mid-range, Progress, Apama, and DataDirect, Specific users, Sybase | Leave a Comment |