ScaleDB presents The Revenge of the Pointer
The MySQL user conference is upon us, and hence so are MySQL-related product announcements, including storage engines. One such is Kickfire. ScaleDB — smaller and earlier-stage — is another.
In a nutshell, ScaleDB’s proposition is:
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Innovative approach to indexing relational DBMS, providing performance advantages.
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Shared-everything scale-up that ScaleDB believes will leapfrog the MySQL engine competition already in Release 1. (In my opinion, this is the least plausible part of the ScaleDB story.)
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State-of-the-art me-too facilities for locking, logging, replication/fail-over, etc., also already in Release 1.
Like many software companies with non-US roots, ScaleDB seems to have started with a single custom project, using a Patricia trie indexing system. Then they decided Patricia tries might be really useful for relational OLTP as well. The ScaleDB team now features four developers, plus half-time or so “Chief Architect” involvement from Vern Watts. Watts seems to pretty much have been Mr. IMS for the past four decades, and thus surely knows a whole lot about pointer-based database management systems; presumably, he’s responsible for the generic DBMS design features that are being added to the innovative indexing scheme. On ScaleDB’s advisory board is PeopleSoft veteran Rick Berquist, about whom I’ve had fond thoughts ever since he talked me into focusing on consulting as the core of my business.*
*More precisely, Rick pretty much tricked me into doing a day of consulting for $15K, then revealed that’s what he’d done, expressing the thought that he’d very much gotten his money’s worth. But I digress …
ScaleDB has no customers to date, but hopes to be in beta by the end of this year. Angels and a small VC firm have provided bridge loans; otherwise, ScaleDB has no outside investment. ScaleDB’s business model thoughts include: Read more
| Categories: Data models and architecture, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, ScaleDB, Theory and architecture | 5 Comments |
Supporting evidence for the DBMS disruption story
As previously announced, I did a webcast this afternoon, discussing database diversity. The title of the talk was taken directly from a post – What leading DBMS vendors don’t want you to realize — that argued mid-range DBMS are suitable for a broad variety of tasks. The overriding theme was a Clayton Christensen-style “disruption” narrative.
The sponsor was EnterpriseDB, which is fitting. While not the biggest DBMS industry disrupter in terms of revenue or visible impact (MySQL and Netezza say “Hi”), the Postgres family in general and EnterpriseDB in particular epitomize the disruption threat like nobody else, because of how broadly they substitute for market-leading database managers.
As I promised on the call, below is a post with links to further research backing up the points made. They’re numbered to match some of the presentation slides, which you can find at this link.
3. Much of the discussion of database diversity comes from a series of posts I coordinated with Mike Stonebraker.
4. At various times, starting on Slide 4, I made reference to datatype extensibility, a key feature of Oracle and DB2 – and a key advantage of Postgres over MySQL.
10. Capping off the database diversity discussion, Slide 10 mirrors this 11-point version of a data management software taxonomy.
13-14. I’ve posted many times about data warehousing DBMS and related technologies, including this overview of major analytic DBMS products, another recent overview of data warehouse specialty technologies, and an attempt to distinguish between data warehouse appliance myths and realities. Of particular interest for further research may be our sections on data warehouse appliances and columnar DBMS.
15. I do most of my posting about text search over on Text Technologies, specifically in the search category. Vendors I specifically mentioned as blending search with other kinds of data retrieval were Mark Logic and Attivio.
16. There’s a section here on native XML database management.
17. We also have a section on managing RDF and other graphical data models.
18. Ditto complex event/stream processing.
19. The only embeddable DBMS I’ve written much about recently is solidDB. And frankly, even in that case I’ve focused more on mid-tier caching uses, the now-canceled MySQL relationship, or general technology than I did specifically on embedded uses.
22-24. Back in February, 2007 I made what is probably still my clearest post explaining why I think market-leading DBMS vendors are in the process of getting disrupted
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range, MySQL, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | Leave a Comment |
My own data management software taxonomy
On a recent webcast, I presented an 11-node data management software taxonomy, updating a post commenting on Mike Stonebraker’s. It goes:
1. High-end OLTP/general-purpose DBMS
2. Mid-range OLTP/general-purpose DBMS
3. Row-based analytic RDBMS
4. Column- or array-based analytic RDBMS
5. Text search engines
6. XML and OO DBMS (but these may merge with search)
7. RDF and other graphical DBMS (but these may merge with relational)
8. Event/stream processing engines (aka CEP)
9. Embedded DBMS for devices
10. Sub-DBMS file managers (e.g. MapReduce/Hadoop)
11. Science DBMS
Obviously, this is a work in progress. In particular, while there’s clearly more than one kind of analytic DBMS, partitioning them into categories is not easy.
| Categories: Database diversity | 5 Comments |
Kickfire is de-cloaking
Kickfire, the renamed C2, is doing one of those buzz-building rollouts in which they make sure the first word comes from people on their payroll golly-gee-whizzing. You can see those at Xarpb and Diamond Notes, as well as a forthcoming article in MySQL magazine. Farhan Mashraqi also appears to be involved. Kickfire is also sponsoring the MySQL user conference next week.
I plan to write more after I get some substance, but a few things seem clear:
1. Kickfire’s product is an appliance that functions as a MySQL storage engine.
2. There’s a custom chip involved.
3. Kickfire plans to throw around the “stream processing” buzzphrase a lot.
Now, “stream processing” means a lot of different things to different people. E.g., Netezza uses the phrase just because their FPGA throws away a lot of data before ever routing it to more conventional SQL processing. But pending a briefing, I’m guessing that Kickfire’s sense is similar to what underlies the case for using CEP in BI.
Edit: Here’s an update after an actual Kickfire briefing.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Kickfire, MySQL | 7 Comments |
Positioning the data warehouse appliances and specialty DBMS
There now are four hardware vendors that each offer or seem about to announce two different tiers of data warehouse appliances: Sun, HP, EMC, and Teradata. Specifically:
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Sun partners with both Greenplum and ParAccel.
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HP sells Neoview, and also is partnered with Vertica.
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EMC (together with Dell in North America and Bull in Europe) sells DATAllegro. Now EMC is also entering a partnership with ParAccel.
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Teradata is pretty far down the road toward releasing a low-end product.
EMC is partnering with ParAccel
A talk about a ParAccel/EMC partnership has been promised for a forthcoming EMC user conference. Otherwise, ParAccel is exposing no useful information on the matter.*
*So what else is new?
The talk is called Highly Scalable Analytic Appliance Powered by EMC and ParAccel, and the abstract says: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, EMC, ParAccel | 2 Comments |
Webcast on database diversity Wednesday April 9 2 pm Eastern
Once or twice a year, EnterpriseDB sponsors a webcast for me. The last two were super well-attended. And most people stayed to the end, which is generally an encouraging sign!
The emphasis this time is on alternatives to the market-leading DBMS. I’ll highlight the advantages of both data warehousing specialists and general-purpose mid-range DBMS (naturally focusing on the latter, given who the sponsor is). The provocative title is taken from a January, 2008 post — What leading DBMS vendors don’t want you to realize. If you read every word of this blog, there probably won’t be much new for you. 🙂 But I’d love to have you listen in and perhaps ask a question anyway!
You can register on EnterpriseDB’s webcast page, which also has an archived webcast I did for them in October, 2007.
| Categories: Database diversity, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range | 1 Comment |
Netezza’s April Fool press release
Short and cute. Even makes a genuine marketing point (low power consumption), and ties into past marketing gimmicks (they’ve played Pimp My SPU in the past, with dramatic paint jobs).
Netezza Corporation (NYSE Arca: NZ), the global leader in data warehouse and analytic appliances, today introduced a limited-edition range of its award-winning Netezza system. Expected to become an instant industry collectible, the systems can now be purchased in a variety of color finishes – pink, blue, red or silver. The standard gun-metal gray unit will continue to be the default option for orders requiring eight or more units, to ensure availability.
Affectionately known as ‘the Netezza’ by customers and partners, the systems not only offer unparalleled processing performance, but the secret sauce of its innovative design is also leading the way in effective power and cooling management – making it a truly green option for any data center.
Not earth-shaking — even if it purports to be earth-saving — but unless I’ve overlooked a biggie, there isn’t much competition this rather lame April Fool’s year.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Humor, Netezza | 5 Comments |