DBMS product categories
Analysis of database management technology in specific product categories. Related subjects include:
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 |
Disruption versus chasm crossing in the database market
The 451 Group just released a report on open source DBMS adoption. In a blog post announcing same, Matthew Aslett wrote (emphasis mine):
you only have to look at the comparative revenues of the open source and proprietary vendors to see that there is a vast chasm to be crossed.
“Chasm” memes were introduced by Geoffrey Moore, founder of the Chasm Group and author of Crossing the Chasm. His defining example was Oracle, and the database market in general. The core insight was that platform markets get to tipping points, after which the leaders have tremendous advantages that make them tend to remain leaders for a good long time.
The sequel to “chasm” theory is Clayton Christensen’s “disruption” rubric, popularized in The Innovator’s Dilemma. I’ve argued previously that the DBMS market is being disrupted, in both the ways that Christensen records: Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Open source | 1 Comment |
GridSQL: What EnterpriseDB is and is not doing in Postgres-based MPP data warehousing
While talking with EnterpriseDB about today’s Postgres Plus announcements, I took the chance to clear up a point of confusion. Somebody told Seth Grimes that EnterpriseDB is out to compete with Greenplum, but that person was wrong. EnterpriseDB fondly hopes to manage multi-terabyte data warehouses, just as Oracle and Microsoft do with their respective general-purpose DBMS. However, EnterpriseDB is not going after the 10s-100s of terabytes sized DBMS that are the province of specialists such as Greenplum, Teradata, Netezza, or columnar DBMS vendors.
Even so, in GridSQL EnterpriseDB does seem to be open-sourcing MPP shared-nothing basics. There’s a lightweight optimizer that does a little (but only a little) more to minimize data movement beyond just optimizing queries on each node. And GridSQL knows how to replicate small tables across each node, a key aspect of many MPP designs. (Partition your facts; replicate your dimensions.)
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Greenplum, Open source, Parallelization | 1 Comment |
EnterpriseDB unveils Postgres Plus
EnterpriseDB is making a series of moves and announcements. Highlights include:
- Renaming/repositioning the product as “Postgres Plus.” The free product is now Postgres Plus, while the version you pay EnterpriseDB for is now Postgres Plus Advanced Server.
- Repackaging the products, so that Postgres Plus Advanced Server is a strict superset of Postgres Plus.
- New features added to Postgres Plus Advanced Server.
- Features newly migrated from Advanced Server down to Postgres Plus.
- A strategic investment by IBM.
- Stressing Postgres in EnterpriseDB marketing, and dropping the tag-line defining themselves as “the Oracle-compatible database company.”
So far as I can tell, most of the technical differences between Advanced Server and regular Postgres Plus lie in three areas: Read more
| Categories: Cache, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, PostgreSQL | 1 Comment |
Data warehousing with paper clips and duct tape
An interesting part of my conversation with Dataupia’s CTO John O’Brien came when we talked about data warehousing in general. On the one hand, he endorsed the view that using Oracle probably isn’t a good idea for data warehouses larger than 10 terabytes, with SQL Server’s limit being well below that. On the other hand, he said he’d helped build 50-60 terabyte warehouses in Oracle years ago.
The point is that to build warehouses that big in Oracle or other traditional DBMS, you have to pull out a large bag of tricks. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Oracle | 17 Comments |
Dataupia catch-up
I had a catch-up phone meeting with Dataupia, since I hadn’t spoke with the company since the middle of last year. Like several other companies in the data warehouse specialist market, Dataupia can be annoyingly secretive. On the plus side – and this is very refreshing — Dataupia doesn’t seem to expect credit for accomplishments beyond those they’re willing to provide actual evidence for.
What I’ve gleaned about Dataupia’s customer activity to date amounts to: Read more