The end of the single-server DBMS vendor
For all practical purposes, there are no DBMS vendors left advocating single-server strategies. Oracle was the last one, but it just acquired in-memory data management vendor TimesTen, which will be used as a cache in front of high-performance Oracle databases. (It will also continue to be sold for stand-alone uses, especially in the financial trading and defense/intelligence markets.)
IBM’s Viper is a server-and-a-half story, with lots of integration over a dual-server (one relational, one native XML) base. IBM also is moving aggressively in data integration/federation, with Ascential and many other acquisitions. It also sells a broad range of database products itself, including two DB2s, several Informix products, and so on.
Microsoft also has a multi-server strategy. In its case, relational, text, and MOLAP storage are more separate than in Oracle’s or even IBM’s products; again, there’s a thick layer of technology on top integrating them. An eventual move to native XML storage will, one must imagine, be handled in the same way.
Smaller vendors Sybase and Progress also offer multiple DBMS each.
Teradata is a pretty big player with only one DBMS — but it’s specialized for data warehousing. Teradata is the first to tell you you should use something else for your classical transaction processing.
The Grand Unified Integrated Database theory is, so far as I can tell, quite dead. Some people just refuse to admit that fact.
| Categories: Database diversity, IBM and DB2, In-memory DBMS, MOLAP, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Oracle, Progress, Apama, and DataDirect, Sybase, Teradata, Theory and architecture | Leave a Comment |
Open source DBMS — easier to install?
Lewis Cunningham compared the installation ease of Oracle, PostGRES and MySQL. Despite expecting Oracle to win (uh, why?), he wound up ranking PostGRES first, with Oracle and MySQL tied — and that’s after marking MySQL down (indirectly albeit not directly) for lacking documentation in a beta release.
This just goes to show: The inherent complexity of the high-end products can outweigh users’ greater familiarity with them.
Besides, ever more people — especially cheap recent grads — are familiar with MySQL.
EDIT: Cunningham has a little more to say here.
Technorati Tags: Database, DBMS, DBMS2, MySQL, Oracle, PostGRES
| Categories: MySQL, Open source, Oracle | 1 Comment |
Oracle vs. open source DBMS
Mark Rittman had a great thread last November questioning the need for Oracle’s advanced features at most installations.
Pretty similar to what I’ve been saying, but more from a developers’ or DBA’s standpoint than a CIO’s.
Technorati Tags: Database, DBMS, DBMS2, Oracle, MySQL
| Categories: Microsoft and SQL*Server, MySQL, Open source, Oracle | Comments Off |
Down with database consolidation!
As with all changes in information technology, the move to DBMS2 will largely be one of evolution. But it does have a couple of revolutionary aspects.
Short-term, the biggest change is a renunciation of database and DBMS vendor consolidation. Consolidation never has worked, it never will work, and as data integration technologies keep improving it’s not that important anyway.
IBM and Oracle offer really great, brilliantly complex data warehousing technology. But if you want the most bang for the buck, forget about them, and go instead with a specialty vendor. Depending on the specifics of your situation, Teradata, Netezza, Datallego, WhiteCross, or SAP may offer the best choice, and that list could be even longer.
Similarly, for generic OLTP data management, cheap and/or open source options are getting ever more attractive. Microsoft is a serious contender for applications that previously only Oracle and IBM could handle, while MySQL and maybe Ingres are moving up the food chain right behind.
In many cases, these alternative technologies are lower-cost across the board: Lower purchase price, lower ongoing maintenance fees, and lower administrative costs.
So what, again, is the case for consolidation?
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Database diversity, IBM and DB2, Ingres, Kognitio, MOLAP, Memory-centric data management, Microsoft and SQL*Server, MySQL, Netezza, Open source, Oracle, SAP AG, Theory and architecture | Comments Off |
MySQL, SAP, and MaxDB
MySQL is like a star high school athlete — impressive skills and potential, but it still only excels at a limited range of mainly simple things. Will it grow into a robust, adult star? I think so, and here’s a big part of the reason why: MaxDB and SAP certification.
MaxDB is a database product that bounced among all the major German computer hardware and software companies: Nixdorf, Siemens, Software AG, and SAP. (What little fame it ever had was primarily under the name Adabas-D.) SAP eventually shipped MaxDB as the underlying DBMS at many R3 installations. This is a huge sign of OLTP industrial-strengthness; if a DBMS can run SAP’s apps, it can run pretty much anything. OK, not necessarily retail banking, airline reservations, and so on — but pretty much anything else.
Well, two years ago MySQL (the company) and SAP agreed to what amounts to a slow-motion merge between MySQL (the product) and MaxDB. The resulting joint product (currently still quite separate from MySQL 5.0) is undergoing a multi-year process of achieving SAP certification. Everybody involved clearly expects this certification to eventually succeed — in 2-3 years, probably, or perhaps less if they were being really coy with me.
And when that happens, there will be a version of MySQL that is unquestionably fit for rigorous OLTP.
Technorati Tags: Database, DBMS, DBMS2, MySQL, SAP, Software
| Categories: MySQL, SAP AG | 4 Comments |
Welcome to the DBMS2 blog
This is the first blog I’ve ever administered, and it was launched in a hurry so that I could follow up on my column introducing the DBMS2 concept. In other words, it’s very much under construction.
Please forgive the exposed girders, loose wires, missing amenities, and dust.
If you need to reach me directly, try curtmonash at monash.com. Please put “DBMS2″ in the note title so that I can pick it out from among all the spam.
If you just want to check out who I am, my Computerworld landing page is as good a place to start as any right now.
| Categories: About this blog | 2 Comments |