Application areas

Posts focusing on the use of database and analytic technologies in specific application domains. Related subjects include:

August 11, 2010

Big Data is Watching You!

There’s a boom in large-scale analytics. The subjects of this analysis may be categorized as:

The most varied, interesting, and valuable of those four categories is the first one.

Read more

July 31, 2010

Nested data structures keep coming up, especially for log files

Nested data structures have come up several times now, almost always in the context of log files.

I don’t have a grasp yet on what exactly is happening here, but it’s something.

July 6, 2010

Cassandra technical overview

Back in March, I talked with Jonathan Ellis of Rackspace, who runs the Apache Cassandra project. I started drafting a blog post then, but never put it up. Then Jonathan cofounded Riptano, a company to commercialize Cassandra, and so I talked with him again in May. Well, I’m finally finding time to clear my Cassandra/Riptano backlog. I’ll cover the more technical parts below, and the more business- or usage-oriented ones in a companion Cassandra/Riptano post.

Jonathan’s core claims for Cassandra include:

In general, Jonathan positions Cassandra as being best-suited to handle a small number of operations at high volume, throughput, and speed. The rest of what you do, as far as he’s concerned, may well belong in a more traditional SQL DBMS.  Read more

July 1, 2010

Why you should go to XLDB4

Scientific data commonly:

In those respects, it is akin to some of the hottest areas for big data analytics, including:

So when Jacek Becla started the XLDB conferences on the premise that scientific and big data analytic challenges have a lot in common, he had a point. There are several tough database problems that the science-focused folks have taken the leading in thinking about, but which are soon going to matter to the commercial world as well. And that’s one of two big reasons why you should consider participating in XLDB4, October 6-7, at the SLAC facility in Menlo Park, CA, as an attendee, sponsor, or both.

The other big reason is that it is important for the world that XLDB succeed. Read more

June 30, 2010

Cloudera Enterprise and Hadoop evolution

I talked with Cloudera a couple of weeks ago in connection with the impending release of Cloudera Enterprise. I’d say:  Read more

June 8, 2010

The most important part of the “social graph” is neither social nor a graph

“Social graph” is a highly misleading term, and so is “social network analysis.” By this I mean:

There’s something akin to “social graphs” and “social network analysis” that is more or less worthy of all the current hype – but graphs and network analysis are only a minor part of the whole story.

In particular, the most important parts of the Facebook “social graph” are neither social nor a graph. Rather, what’s really important is an aggregate Profile of Revealed Preferences, of which person-to-person connections or other things best modeled by a graph play only a small part.

Read more

May 25, 2010

VoltDB finally launches

VoltDB is finally launching today. As is common for companies in sectors I write about, VoltDB — or just “Volt” — has discovered the virtues of embargoes that end 12:01 am. Let’s go straight to the technical highlights:

Read more

May 23, 2010

More on Sybase IQ, including Version 15.2

Back in March, Sybase was kind enough to give me permission to post a slide deck about Sybase IQ. Well, I’m finally getting around to doing so. Highlights include but are not limited to:

Sybase IQ may have a bit of a funky architecture (e.g., no MPP), but the age of the product and the substantial revenue it generates have allowed Sybase to put in a bunch of product features that newer vendors haven’t gotten around to yet.

More recently, Sybase volunteered permission for me to preannounce Sybase IQ Version 15.2 by a few days (it’s scheduled to come out this week). Read more

May 22, 2010

Notes on SciDB and scientific data management

I firmly believe that, as a community, we should look for ways to support scientific data management and related analytics. That’s why, for example, I went to XLDB3 in Lyon, France at my own expense. Eight months ago, I wrote about issues in scientific data management. Here’s some of what has transpired since then.

The main new activity I know of has been in the open source SciDB project.   Read more

May 12, 2010

The Clustrix story

After my recent post, the Clustrix guys raised their hands and briefed me. Takeaways included:    Read more

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