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
Microsoft is buying DATAllegro
I’ve long argued that:
- Oracle and Microsoft are doomed in the data warehouse market unless they acquire MPP/shared-nothing data warehouse DBMS and/or data warehouse appliances.
- DATAllegro is the ideal acquisition for either of them.
Microsoft has now validated my claim by agreeing to buy DATAllegro. As you probably know, we’ve been covering DATAllegro extensively, as per the links listed below.
Basic deal highlights include: Read more
Long, confused overview of data warehouse DBMS vendors
Steven Swoyer has an article for Enterprise Systems that covers a lot of issues in data warehouse technology. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t always cover them correctly. E.g., he seems to imply that columnar architectures aren’t relational. (Oops.) I wouldn’t put too much credence in the other market segmentations he posits either.
Some of his theses, however, are basically correct. E.g., he points out that demand for fast, cost-effective, (almost) unconstrained ad hoc queries keeps growing, and that much of the recent innovation is concerned with supplying them.
| Categories: Data warehousing | 1 Comment |
Another Cognos scandal in Massachusetts
I already posted about the Boston Globe’s reporting on a deal to supply the whole Massachusetts state government with Cognos software that since has been investigated and rescinded.
The Globe now reports that a multimillion dollar deal the prior year with the Massachusetts Department of Education was equally dubious. Lowlights include: Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Cognos | Leave a Comment |
Declaration of Data Independence (humor)
The data warehouse appliance industry has a well-developed funny bone. Dataupia’s contribution is a Declaration of Data Independence, which begins:
When in the Course of an increasingly competitive global economy it becomes necessary for one data set to dissolve its connections to a constraining environment, the separate but inherently unequal station to which the Laws of Whose budget is larger prevails.
Related links:
- Cartoons from DATAllegro
- April Fool press release from Netezza
Three cartoons from DATAllegro
Related links:
- Humor from Netezza
- Another gerbil-based solution
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Humor | 1 Comment |
The IRS data warehouse
According to a recent Eric Lai Computerworld story and a 2006 Sybase.com success story,
- The IRS has a data warehouse running on Sybase IQ, with 500 named users, called the CDW (Compliance Data Warehouse). (Computerworld)
- By some metric, it’s a 150 TB warehouse. (Computerworld)
- By some metric, they add 15-20 TB/year, with a 4 hour load time. (Computerworld)
- As of 2006, there were 20-25 TB of “input data”, with a “70% compression rate”. (Sybase)
I can’t entirely reconcile those numbers, but in any case the database sounds plenty big.
Computerworld also said:
the research division also uses Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server to store all of the metadata for the data warehouse and the rest of the agency. Managing and cleaning all of that metadata — 10,000 labels for 150 databases — is a huge task in itself,
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Specific users, Sybase | 2 Comments |
Jerry Held on cloud data warehousing and how business intelligence will be transformed by it
Vertica Chairman Jerry Held has a pair of blog posts on analytics and data warehousing in the cloud. The first lays out a number of potential benefits and consequences of cloud data warehousing, under the heading of “Transforming BI”: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Cloud computing, Data mart outsourcing, Data warehousing, Software as a Service (SaaS), Vertica Systems | 7 Comments |
Cognos/State of Massachusetts scandal
I assumed this had been reported widely outside of Massachusetts, but a web search suggests otherwise.
The story is this: Cognos sold 20,000 seats of software to Massachusetts for $13 million. There were technical violations of purchase procedures, and other aspects of the deal that didn’t pass the smell test. After IBM bought Cognos, the deal was rescinded, and is being rebid. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Cognos, Pricing | 2 Comments |
Response to Rita Sallam of Oracle
In a comment thread on Seth Grimes’ blog, Rita Sallam of Oracle engaged in a passionate defense of her data warehousing software. I’d like to take it upon myself to respond to a few of here points here. Read more
| Categories: Benchmarks and POCs, Clustering, Data warehousing, Oracle, Parallelization | 10 Comments |
Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative
Oracle’s response to data warehouse appliances — and to IBM’s BCUs (Balanced Configuration Units) — so far is the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative (OOW, not to be confused with Oracle Open World). A small amount of information about Oracle Optimized Warehouse can be found on Oracle’s website. Another small amount can be found in this recent long and breathless TDWI article, full of such brilliancies as attributing to the data warehouse appliance vendors the “claim that relational databases simply aren’t cut out for analytic workloads.” (Uh, what does he think they’re running — CODASYL DBMS?)
So far as I can tell, what Oracle Optimized Warehouse — much like IBM’s BCU — boils down to is the same old Oracle DBMS, but with recommended hardware configuration and tuning parameters. Thus, a lot of the hassle is taken out of ordering and installing an Oracle data warehouse, which is surely a good thing. But I doubt it does much to solve Oracle’s problems with price, price/performance, or the inevitable DBA hassles derived from a poorly-performing DBMS.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Oracle | 3 Comments |