Ingres
Analysis of relational database management system vendor Ingres and its products. Related subjects include:
- Open source database management systems
- (in Software Memories) Historical notes on Ingres
Database implications if IBM acquires Sun
Reported or rumored merger discussions between IBM and Sun are generating huge amounts of discussion today (some links below). Here are some quick thoughts around the subject of how the IBM/Sun deal — if it happens — might affect the database management system industry. Read more
25 facts about Ingres, give or take a couple
Emma McGrattan of Ingres offers a “25 facts” post about Ingres. 24 really are about Ingres. Some are interesting (who knew Ingres still used a lot of Quel?). Some are if anything understated — e.g., there are lots of current CEOs who are Ingres alums (Dave Kellogg and Dennis Moore jump to mind). Only one is a real eyebrow-raiser.
Point 23 says “The average tenure of an Ingres Engineer is 15+ years.” On the other hand, Point 3 says “The longest serving member of Ingres staff is John Smedley who has been with us since June of 1987.” And most of Ingres’ technical staff left after Ingres was acquired by CA, which occurred a few months shy of 15 years ago. Reconciling all that is challenging.
Actually, I was dubious about a second claim too, namely that Ingres/Star was the first distributed DBMS; I thought that the distributed version of Tandem NonStop SQL actually predated it by a few years. But a somewhat contemporaneous article with a number of distributed DBMS dates shows my memory was wrong on that score.
| Categories: Ingres | 3 Comments |
Gartner’s 2008 data warehouse database management system Magic Quadrant is out
February, 2011 edit: I’ve now commented on Gartner’s 2010 Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant as well.
Gartner’s annual Magic Quadrant for data warehouse DBMS is out. Thankfully, vendors don’t seem to be taking it as seriously as usual, so I didn’t immediately hear about it. (I finally noticed it in a Greenplum pay-per-click ad.) Links to Gartner MQs tend to come and go, but as of now here are two working links to the 2008 Gartner Data Warehouse Database Management System MQ. My posts on the 2007 and 2006 MQs have also been updated with working links. Read more
What leading DBMS vendors don’t want you to realize
For very high-end applications, the list of viable database management systems is short. Scalability can be a problem. (The rankings of most scalable alternatives differ in the OLTP and data warehouse realms.) Extreme levels of security can be had from only a few DBMS. (Oracle would have you believe there’s only one choice.) And if you truly need 99.99% uptime, there only are a few DBMS you even should consider.
But for most applications at any enterprise – and for all applications at most enterprises – super high-end DBMS aren’t required. There are relatively few applications that wouldn’t run perfectly well on PostgreSQL or EnterpriseDB today. Ingres and Progress OpenEdge aren’t far behind (they’re a little lacking in datatype support). Ditto Intersystems Cache’, although the nonrelational architecture will be off-putting to many. And to varying degrees, you can also do fine with MySQL, Pervasive PSQL, MaxDB, or a variety of other products – or for that matter with the cheap or free crippled versions of Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, and Informix.
What’s more, these mid-range database management systems can have significant advantages over their high-end brethren. Read more
Naming the DBMS disruptors
Edit: This post has largely been superseded by this more recent one defining mid-range relational DBMS.
I find myself defining a new product category – midrange OLTP/multipurpose DBMS. (Or just midrange DBMS for brevity.) Nothing earthshaking here; I’m simply referring to those products that: Read more
EnterpriseDB tries PostgreSQL-based Oracle plug-compatibility
Like Greenplum, EnterpriseDB is a PostgreSQL-based DBMS vendor with an interesting story, whose technical merits I don’t yet know enough to judge. In particular, CEO Andy Astor:
- Confirms that EnterpriseDB is OLTP-focused, unlike Greenplum. That said, they are also used for some reporting and so on. But they don’t run 10s-of-terabytes sized data marts.
- Claims EnterpriseDB has a high level of Oracle compatibility – SQL, datatypes, stored procedures (so that would be PL/SQL too), packages, functions, etc.
- Claims ANTs isn’t nearly as Oracle-compatible.
- Claims 50-100% better OLTP performance out of the box than vanilla PostgreSQL, due to auto-tuning.
Also, EnterpriseDB has added a bunch of tools to PostgreSQL – debugging, DBA, etc. And it provides actual-company customer support, something that seems desirable when using a DBMS. It should also be noted that the product is definitely closed-source, notwithstanding EnterpriseDB’s open-source-like business model and its close ties to the open source community.
| Categories: ANTs Software, Data warehousing, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Ingres, Mid-range, OLTP, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | 1 Comment |
Ingres tries to become relevant again
Ingres has non-trivial resources – 300 employees, 10,000 “real” customers, and some additional large number of installations embedded in CA products. It has a fairly pure support-only open source revenue model, although there may be exceptions to that in cases such as the DATAllegro relationship.
Should anybody care?
Yes and no. To compete effectively in the mid-range OLTP relational database management system market, you need a product that’s much easier to administer than Oracle, and preferably easier even than Microsoft SQL*Server. Ingres doesn’t meet that standard. Until it does, it probably won’t have much of a market outside its current installed base. But some of Ingres’s strategies and directions are pretty clever, and may be interesting to people who’d never actually consider using Ingres technology. Specifically, Ingres has plans in the areas of appliances and database services, two subjects that are close to my heart. Read more
| Categories: DATAllegro, Ingres | 2 Comments |
OLTP database management system market – the consensus isn’t ALL wrong (deck-clearing post #1)
Most of what I’ve written lately about database management seems to have been focused on analytic technologies. But I have a lot to say on the OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) side too. So let’s start by clearing the decks. Here’s a list of some consensus views that I in essence agree with:
- Oracle is the top of the line, and has nothing wrong with it other than cost of ownership and the non-joys of doing business with Oracle Corporation.
- DB2/mainframe is a fine product, but only if you like IBM mainframes.
- DB2/open systems is another fine product, but it’s hard to think of reasons to use it over Oracle.
- Microsoft SQL Server has great cost of ownership if you’re a Windows (server) shop anyway, especially on the administrative side. It does most but not all of what Oracle does.
- Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise is a lot like SQL Server, but without the Windows dependence or the great Microsoft tools. If you have it installed or are Chinese, you should strongly consider using it, but otherwise there are better alternatives.
- Progress’ DBMS is great if you don’t need any of the features it’s missing. Administration, for example, is a super-low-cost breeze. But why use it unless you’re also using the Progress development tools?
- Intersystems’ Cache’ is another fine mid-range product that involves buying into the vendors’ whole tool set – all the more so because it isn’t relational.
- Small-footprint embedded DBMS, from vendors such as Sybase’s iAnywhere division or Solid Information Technologies, are off in their own little world. Mainly, that world is telecom, with a satellite in medical devices, although other kinds of networked equipment also sometimes use these products.
- IBM’s non-DB2 database management products – IMS, Informix, etc. – are fine things to stick with until you have to change. Ditto products from Software AG, Computer Associates, Cincom, etc.
- MySQL Version 4 is an OLTP joke, but it’s a joke many people share. (Hey — a lot of blogs, including mine, run on WordPress and MySQL 4.)
- Until Ingres is meaningfully marketed and sold outside its installed base, it’s not worth worrying about.
- PostgreSQL is more significant as the underpinning of other products — mainly EnterpriseDB in the OLTP space — than it is in its own right.
Myths about DATallegro, Ingres, open source, etc.
Sometimes, when one talks to a company about a close competitor, what one hears may not be 100% strictly accurate. Yesterday, I more than once heard claims that sounded oddly like “DATallegro has to open source whatever software it develops.” Today, DATallegro CEO Stuart Frost clarified as follows:
• DATallegro has no (little?) legal obligation to open source anything. Even the version of Ingres they use is not the GPL one.
• They do give a few enhancements back to Ingres (via open source?) rather than maintain them themselves.
• The whole MPP technology is proprietary, in every sense of “proprietary.” (For example, they use a whole different optimizer than Ingres’s. I’ve forgotten whether the Ingres optimizer is also left in place.)
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, DATAllegro, Ingres, Memory-centric data management, Open source | 1 Comment |
Introduction to Greenplum and some compare/contrast
Netezza relies on FPGAs. DATallegro essentially uses standard components, but those include Infiniband cards (and there’s a little FPGA action when they do encryption). Greenplum, however, claims to offer a highly competitive data warehouse solution that’s so software-only you can download it from their web site. That said, their main sales mode seems to also be through appliances, specifically ones branded and sold by Sun, combining Greenplum and open source software on a “Thumper” box. And the whole thing supposedly scales even higher than DATallegro and Netezza, because you can manage over a petabyte if you chain together a dozen of the 100 terabyte racks.
Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, DATAllegro, Greenplum, Ingres, Netezza, Open source, PostgreSQL | 4 Comments |