Analytic technologies
Discussion of technologies related to information query and analysis. Related subjects include:
- Business intelligence
- Data warehousing
- (in Text Technologies) Text mining
- (in The Monash Report) Data mining
- (in The Monash Report) General issues in analytic technology
Netezza update
In my usual dual role, I called Phil Francisco of Netezza to lay some post-Microsoft/DATAllegro consulting on him late on a Friday night — and then took the opportunity of being on the phone with him to get a general Netezza update. Netezza’s July quarter just ended, so they’re still in quiet period, so I didn’t press him for a lot of numerical detail. More generally, I didn’t find a lot out that wasn’t already covered in my May Netezza update. But notwithstanding all those disclaimers, it was still a pretty interesting chat. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Netezza, Sybase | 3 Comments |
Database compression coming to the fore
I’ve posted extensively about data-warehouse-focused DBMS’ compression, which can be a major part of their value proposition. Most notable, perhaps, is a short paper Mike Stonebraker wrote for this blog — before he and his fellow researchers started their own blog — on column-stores’ advantages in compression over row stores. Compression has long been a big part of the DATAllegro story, while Netezza got into the compression game just recently. Part of Teradata’s pricing disadvantage may stem from weak compression results. And so on.
Well, the general-purpose DBMS vendors are working busily at compression too. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 exploits compression in several ways (basic data storage, replication/log shipping, backup). And Oracle offers compression too, as per this extensive writeup by Don Burleson.
If I had to sum up what we do and don’t know about database compression, I guess I’d start with this:
- Columnar DBMS really do get substantially better compression than row-based database systems. The most likely reasons are:
- More elements of a column fit into a single block, so all compression schemes work better.
- More compression schemes wind up getting used (e.g., delta compression as well the token/dictionary compression that row-based systems use too).
- Data-warehouse-based row stores seem to do better at compression than general-purpose DBMS. The reasons most likely are some combination of:
- They’re trying harder.
- They use larger block sizes.
- Notwithstanding these reasonable-sounding generalities, there’s a lot of variation in compression success among otherwise comparable products.
Compression is one of the most important features a database management system can have, since it creates large savings in storage and sometimes non-trivial gains in performance as well. Hence, it should be a key item in any DBMS purchase decision.
Column stores vs. vertically-partitioned row stores
Daniel Abadi and Sam Madden followed up their post on column stores vs. fully-indexed row stores with one about column stores vs. vertically-partitioned row stores. Once again, the apparently reasonable way to set up the row-store database backfired badly.* Read more
Extensive QlikView coverage from a big fan and reseller
David Raab is a reseller and great fan of QlikTech’s QlikView. His recent lengthy post about the product (I hesitate to call it “detailed” only because he rightly complains that QlikTech is in fact stingy with technical detail) is positive enough to have been recommended by the company itself. Specifically, it was cited in the comment thread to my recent post on QlikTech, where David himself also addressed some of my questions.
But of course, no technology is perfect, not even one as great as David thinks QlikView is. Read more
QlikTech/QlikView update
I talked with Anthony Deighton of memory-centric BI vendor QlikTech for an hour and a half this afternoon. QlikTech is quite the success story, with disclosed 2007 revenue of $80 million, up 80% year over year, and confidential year-to-date 2008 figures that do not disappoint as a follow-on. And a look at the QlikTech’s QlikView product makes it easy to understand how this success might have come about.
Let me start by reviewing QlikTech’s technology, as best I understand it.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Columnar database management, Database compression, Memory-centric data management, QlikTech and QlikView | 17 Comments |
Further thoughts on DATAllegro/Microsoft
My first, biggest thought about DATAllegro’s acquisition by Microsoft is “Why the ____ did it have to happen while I was trying to relax on my annual Cayman vacation???” Not coincidentally, I don’t plan to neatly cross-link all my posts and so on about DATAllegro/Microsoft until I get back to Acton this weekend.
One linking screwup is that I previously forgot to mention that — in addition to the numerous posts here — I also made several DATAllegro/Microsoft-related posts on my Network World blog A World of Bytes. They include: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server | 8 Comments |
Other early coverage of Microsoft/DATAllegro
- Here’s the official press release on DATAllegro’s site, and Microsoft’s.
- Doug Henschen of Intelligent Enterprise has a good article. He got quotes from Microsoft claiming that SQL Server on its own would be able to handle 10s of terabytes of data in the next release, but DATAllegro was needed to get up to the 100s of terabytes. That said, the quotes don’t say whether that’s user data or total disk usage — the latter frankly seems more plausible.
- James Kobielus of Forrester has a long post on the Microsoft/DATAllegro deal, emphasizing product packaging issues and glossing over technological differentiators. (Edit: The post seems down as of Friday midday.)
- This is a few weeks old, but Kevin Closson is extremely skeptical of some of DATAllegro’s technical claims. (Not that it matters much if he’s right — more nodes = more throughput, no matter how much Oracle folks rant.)
- Eric Lai of Computerworld gets it right.
- Larry Dignan thinks the acquisition is part of an overall strong Microsoft enterprise push.
- William McKnight thinks Microsoft usually does a good job of integrating acquisitions.
- DATAllegro CEO Stuart Frost is happy.
- David Hunter thinks Microsoft will blithely continue with DATAllegro’s limited-hardware-support strategy. He’s almost certainly wrong.
- Philip Howard says almost nothing I agree with, although I can’t argue with the part
Conversely, it’s bad news for Ingres, bad news for Oracle, bad news for IBM, bad news for Teradata and bad news for HP, all for obvious reasons. As for the other appliance vendors: they will not be too happy either. In particular, we now have to consider who can survive on their own, who might be acquired, who might do the acquiring, and who is going to disappear.
| Categories: Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server | 15 Comments |
DATAllegro could provide Microsoft with a true enterprise data warehouse sooner than you think
Jim Ericson of DM Review emailed the excellent questions:
Does DATAllegro give MSFT full-service high end data warehousing capability? If not, what is missing?
My quick answers are:
- No.
- Two things:
- Hard-core multi-user concurrency.
- Support for more esoteric analytic tools and functionality
Both are largely a matter of product maturity, and as a young company DATAllegro isn’t quite there yet.
That said, integration with Microsoft SQL Server is apt to be a big help in addressing both issues. Read more
The data warehouse DBMS consolidation has begun
There are, or soon will be, a number of strong players in the market for data warehouse specialty DBMS.
- Teradata continues to prosper, whatever one may think of its price points.
- Netezza is growing healthily.
- Microsoft is buying DATAllegro.
- Oracle needs to buy somebody in response.
- DB2 is a significant player too, although perhaps not quite as big as one might think.
- Sybase IQ can’t be counted out either.
That doesn’t leave a lot of room for other players. Read more
| Categories: Data warehousing | 6 Comments |
How will Oracle save its data warehouse business?
By acquiring DATAllegro, Microsoft has seriously leapfrogged Oracle in data warehouse technology. All doubts about maturity and versatility notwithstanding, DATAllegro has a 10X or better size advantage (actually, I think it’s more like 20-40X) versus Oracle in warehouses its technology can straightforwardly handle. Oracle cannot afford to let this move go unanswered.
It’s of course possible that Oracle has been successfully developing comparable data warehouse technology internally. But it’s unlikely. Oracle hasn’t done anything that radical, internally and successfully, for about 15 years, RAC (Real Application Clusters) excepted. (I.e., since the object/relational extensibility framework started in Release 7.) So in all likelihood, the answer will come via acquisition. I think there are four candidates that make the most sense: Teradata, Vertica, ParAccel, and Greenplum. Kognitio (controlled by former Oracle honcho Geoff Squire) might be in the mix as well. Netezza is probably a non-starter because of its hardware-centric strategy.
Here’s why I’m emphasizing Teradata, Vertica, ParAccel, and Greenplum: Read more