MOLAP

Analysis of MOLAP (Multidimensional OnLine Analytic Processing) products and vendors. Related subjects include:

November 14, 2005

Defining and surveying “Memory-centric data management”

I’m writing more and more about memory-centric data management technology these days, including in my latest Computerworld column. You may be wondering what that term refers to. Well, I’ve basically renamed what are commonly called “in-memory DBMS,” for what I think is a very good reason: Most of the products in the category aren’t true DBMS, aren’t wholly in-memory, or both! Indeed, if you catch me in a grouchy mood I might argue that “in-memory DBMS” is actually a contradiction in terms.

I’ll give a quick summary of the vendors and products I am focusing on in this newly-named category, and it should be clearer what I mean:

So there you have it. There are a whole lot of technologies out there that manage data in RAM, in ways that would make little or no sense if disks were more intimately involved. Conventional DBMS also try to exploit RAM and limit disk access, via caching; but generally the data access methods they use in RAM are pretty similar to those they use when going out to disk. So memory-centric systems can have a major advantage.

August 13, 2005

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.

August 8, 2005

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?

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