EnterpriseDB tries PostgreSQL-based Oracle plug-compatibility
Like Greenplum, EnterpriseDB is a PostgreSQL-based DBMS vendor with an interesting story, whose technical merits I don’t yet know enough to judge. In particular, CEO Andy Astor:
- Confirms that EnterpriseDB is OLTP-focused, unlike Greenplum. That said, they are also used for some reporting and so on. But they don’t run 10s-of-terabytes sized data marts.
- Claims EnterpriseDB has a high level of Oracle compatibility – SQL, datatypes, stored procedures (so that would be PL/SQL too), packages, functions, etc.
- Claims ANTs isn’t nearly as Oracle-compatible.
- Claims 50-100% better OLTP performance out of the box than vanilla PostgreSQL, due to auto-tuning.
Also, EnterpriseDB has added a bunch of tools to PostgreSQL – debugging, DBA, etc. And it provides actual-company customer support, something that seems desirable when using a DBMS. It should also be noted that the product is definitely closed-source, notwithstanding EnterpriseDB’s open-source-like business model and its close ties to the open source community.
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| Categories: Actian and Ingres, ANTs Software, Data warehousing, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range, OLTP, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | 2 Comments |
The five flavors of DB2
I asked Jeff Jones of IBM to explain the various DB2 code lines to me. His answer was so clear that I asked further permission to post it verbatim. Here it is. The main takeaway is that one shouldn’t confuse the shared-everything z/OS (mainframe) version with the more loosely-coupled Unix/Linux/Windows version.
1. DB2 9 for z/OS (CAM note: i.e., mainframe) is a unique code base designed in cooperation with and integrated tightly with the operating system (z/OS) and the hardware (System z). That said, our development and administration tools (the externals of the product), as well as the SQL language supported, are built to be nearly the same across DB2 platforms. DB2 9 for z/OS has a shared-resource architecture similar to Oracle RAC. Parallel Sysplex and other specialized System z hardware enable this high performance, high reliability scenario (that even Oracle has said is well built). Born in 1983.
2. DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX and Windows is a second unique code base. (CAM note: i.e., “open systems”) Roughly 10% of that code base is reserved for platform-specific code to optimize to threading, security, clustering etc. across Linux (quite a few), UNIX (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX) and Windows (many versions). This code base is designed for portability given that we don’t own the underlying hardware in all cases (as we do for DB2 on System z). Much tooling is shared across the other DB2 platforms. Born in 1993.
http://ibm.com/db2/9
http://ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux/validate < --- Linux platforms supported NOTE: DB2 for Linux runs on all four IBM servers (System z, System p, System i and System x), same code base. Read more
| Categories: IBM and DB2 | 2 Comments |
Greenplum’s strategy
I talked with Greenplum honchos Bill Cook and Scott Yara yesterday. Bill is the new CEO, formerly head of Sun’s field operations. Scott is president, and in effect the marketing-guy co-founder. I still don’t know whether I really believe their technical story. But I do think I have a feel for what they’re trying to do. Key aspects of the Greenplum strategy include:
- Greenplum rewrote a lot of PostgreSQL to parallelize it, in the correct belief that MPP is the best way to go for high-end data warehousing.
- Indeed, Greenplum claims to have a general solution to DBMS parallelization. Unlike Netezza, DATallegro, Vertica, and Kognitio, Greenplum offers a row-oriented data store with a fairly full set of indexing techniques. You want star indices or bitmaps? They have them. (They even claimed to be used for some text management when last we talked, although that was for O’Reilly and Mark Logic seems to be O’Reilly’s main text-indexing vendor.)
- Greenplum’s main sales strategy is to be part of Sun’s product line, bundled into Thumper boxes as single-part-number Sun offerings. They certainly could add other hardware OEMs, just like Checkpoint sells firewalls through multiple appliance vendors. But at least for now it’s all about Sun.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Open source, PostgreSQL | 5 Comments |
Ingres tries to become relevant again
Ingres has non-trivial resources – 300 employees, 10,000 “real” customers, and some additional large number of installations embedded in CA products. It has a fairly pure support-only open source revenue model, although there may be exceptions to that in cases such as the DATAllegro relationship.
Should anybody care?
Yes and no. To compete effectively in the mid-range OLTP relational database management system market, you need a product that’s much easier to administer than Oracle, and preferably easier even than Microsoft SQL*Server. Ingres doesn’t meet that standard. Until it does, it probably won’t have much of a market outside its current installed base. But some of Ingres’s strategies and directions are pretty clever, and may be interesting to people who’d never actually consider using Ingres technology. Specifically, Ingres has plans in the areas of appliances and database services, two subjects that are close to my heart. Read more
| Categories: Actian and Ingres, DATAllegro | 2 Comments |
DBMS market competitive overview (Part 1)
Monash Advantage members just received an exclusive nine-page Monash Letter with a competitive overview of the DBMS industry. The full analysis is exclusive to them, but I’ll give some highlights here.
1. As per my recent “deck-clearing” posts, there’s a lot more competitive opportunity in the DBMS industry than many observers recognize.
2. One reason is the considerable number of separate niches in the DBMS space.
3. Oracle is a classical Geoffrey Moore “gorilla” only in the market for high-end OLTP and mixed-used DBMS. Everything else is up for grabs.
4. As discussed here extensively, simpler appliance-like architectures are beating the overly complex general-purpose DBMS vendors’ solutions for VLDB data warehousing.
5. MPP/shared-nothing architectures are deservedly beating SMP/shared-everything approaches for VLDB data warehousing.
That’s not the only Monash Letter recently released; another one covered online marketing strategy and tactics.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Database diversity, Oracle, Theory and architecture | Leave a Comment |
Why Oracle and Microsoft will lose in VLDB data warehousing
I haven’t been as clear as I could have been in explaining why I think MPP/shared-nothing beats SMP/shared-everything. The answer is in a short white paper, currently bottlenecked at the sponsor’s end of the process. Here’s an excerpt from the latest draft:
There are two ways to make more powerful computers:
1. Use more powerful parts – processors, disk drives, etc.
2. Just use more parts of the same power.
Of the two, the more-parts strategy much more cost-effective. Smaller* parts are much more economical, since the bigger the part, the harder and more costly it is to avoid defects, in manufacturing and initial design alike. Consequently, all high-end computers rely on some kind of parallel processing.
*As measured in terms of capacity, transistor count, etc., not physical size. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Netezza, Oracle, Parallelization, Teradata, Theory and architecture, Vertica Systems | 7 Comments |
How Hyperion will change Oracle
Oracle is evidently buying Hyperion Software. Much like Gaul, Hyperion can be divided into three parts:
- Budgeting and consolidation applications, descended from the original Hyperion and Pillar.
- Essbase, the definitive MOLAP engine, descended from Arbor Software.
- A business intelligence suite, descended from Brio.
The most important part is budgeting/planning, because it could help Oracle change the rules for application software. But Essbase could be just the nudge Oracle needs to finally renounce its one-server-fits-all dogma.
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| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Microsoft and SQL*Server, MOLAP, Oracle | 17 Comments |