ANTs Software CEO insults Sybase, claims migration success
Edit: ANTs Software seems to have subsequently collapsed, which may be why some of these links broke too.
Jeff Pryslak of Sybase put up a post insulting ANTs Software and the general idea of ANTs-aided Sybase-to-DB2 migration. CEO Joe Kozak of ANTs hit back with a rambling diatribe, which came to my attention because he mentioned my name in it, making some rather fanciful remarks about the “long” relationship I used to have with ANTs Software. (I do recall at least one briefing, plus some attempts from them to buy my services under the condition that I agree to a ridiculous NDA, which I refused to sign.)
This piqued my interest, so — recalling that ANTs is a public company — I decided to take a look at just how successful their software products business is. Well, for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, ANTs’ 10-Q filing says (emphasis mine): Read more
| Categories: ANTs Software, Emulation, transparency, portability, IBM and DB2, Sybase | 9 Comments |
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.
- Google has published about a project called Dremel. Per Tasso Agyros, one of Dremel’s key concepts is nested data structures.
- Those arrays that the XLDB/SciDB folks keep talking about are meant to be nested data structures. Scientific data is of course log-oriented. eBay was very interested in that project too.
- Facebook’s log files have a big nested data structure flavor.
I don’t have a grasp yet on what exactly is happening here, but it’s something.
| Categories: eBay, Facebook, Google, Log analysis, Scientific research, Theory and architecture | 7 Comments |
Teradata, Xkoto Gridscale (RIP), and active-active clustering
Having gotten a number of questions about Teradata’s acquisition of Xkoto, I leaned on Teradata for an update, and eventually connected with Scott Gnau. Takeaways included:
- Teradata is discontinuing Xkoto’s existing product Gridscale, which Scott characterized as being too OLTP-focused to be a good fit for Teradata. Teradata hopes and expects that existing Xkoto Gridscale customers won’t renew maintenance. (I’m not sure that they’ll even get the option to do so.)
- The point of Teradata’s technology + engineers acquisition of Xkoto is to enhance Teradata’s active-active or multi-active data warehousing capabilities, which it has had in some form for several years.
- In particular, Teradata wants to tie together different products in the Teradata product line. (Note: Those typically all run pretty much the same Teradata database management software, except insofar as they might be on different releases.)
- Scott rattled off all the plausible areas of enhancement, with multiple phrasings – performance, manageability, ease of use, tools, features, etc.
- Teradata plans to have one or two releases based on Xkoto technology in 2011.
Frankly, I’m disappointed at the struggles of clustering efforts such as Xkoto Gridscale or Continuent’s pre-Tungsten products, but if the DBMS vendors meet the same needs themselves, that’s OK too.
The logic behind active-active database implementations actually seems pretty compelling: Read more
| Categories: Clustering, Continuent, Data warehousing, Solid-state memory, Teradata, Theory and architecture, Xkoto | 9 Comments |
Advice for some non-clients
Edit: Any further anonymous comments to this post will be deleted. Signed comments are permitted as always.
Most of what I get paid for is in some form or other consulting. (The same would be true for many other analysts.) And so I can be a bit stingy with my advice toward non-clients. But my non-clients are a distinguished and powerful group, including in their number Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and most of the BI vendors. So here’s a bit of advice for them too.
Oracle. On the plus side, you guys have been making progress against your reputation for untruthfulness. Oh, I’ve dinged you for some past slip-ups, but on the whole they’ve been no worse than other vendors.’ But recently you pulled a doozy. The analyst reports section of your website fails to distinguish between unsponsored and sponsored work.* That is a horrible ethical stumble. Fix it fast. Then put processes in place to ensure nothing that dishonest happens again for a good long time.
*Merv Adrian’s “report” listed high on that page is actually a sponsored white paper. That Merv himself screwed up by not labeling it clearly as such in no way exonerates Oracle. Besides, I’m sure Merv won’t soon repeat the error — but for Oracle, this represents a whole pattern of behavior.
Oracle. And while I’m at it, outright dishonesty isn’t your only unnecessary credibility problem. You’re also playing too many games in analyst relations.
HP. Neoview will never succeed. Admit it to yourselves. Go buy something that can. Read more
Microstrategy technology notes
Earlier this week, Microstrategy made Mark LaRow available to talk about technology. The proximate reason was my recent mention of Microstrategy’s mobile BI emphasis, but we also touched on Microstrategy’s approach to in-memory business intelligence and some other subjects. We didn’t go into the depth of a similar conversation I had recently with Qlik Technologies, but I found it quite interesting even so.
Highlights of the in-memory BI discussion included:
- Microstrategy’s in-memory BI data structure is some kind of simple array, redundantly called a “vector array.” A more precise description was not available.
- While early versions of the capability have been around since 2002, Microstrategy’s in-memory BI capability only got serious with Microstrategy 9, which was released in Q1 of 2009. In particular, Microstrategy 9 was the first time in-memory BI had full security.
- Mark says a core reason for having their own in-memory BI is because Microstrategy has more smarts to predict which aggregates will or won’t be needed. Strictly speaking, that can’t be argued with. Vendors like Infobright would argue they come close enough to that ideal as to make little practical difference – but I’m also cheating by naming Infobright, which is particularly focused in that direction.
- Microstrategy in-memory BI compresses data by about 2X. Mark didn’t know which compression algorithm was used.
- The limitation on what’s in-memory is, of course, how much RAM you can fit on an SMP box. Microstrategy has seen up to ½ terabyte deployments.
- In-memory Microstrategy data structures are typically built during the batch window, for performance reasons. This is not, strictly speaking, mandatory, but I didn’t get a sense that Microstrategy was being used for much that resembled real-time business intelligence.
- Mark said Microstrategy has no interest in using solid-state memory to expand the reach of its in-memory BI. Frankly, if Microstrategy doesn’t change that stance, it’s in-memory BI capabilities are unlikely to stay significant for too many years.
Another key subject we discussed was Microstrategy’s view of dashboards. Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Data warehousing, Memory-centric data management, MicroStrategy | Leave a Comment |
How should somebody teach themselves database and programming skills?
From time to time, I get in a conversation with somebody who is:
- Unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise desirous of having more commercial skills.
- Not a programmer, but desirous of having some technical skills.
- Astute enough to realize s/he will never be a serious techie.
I generally have two models in mind when guiding such a person:
- Analytics/business intelligence/stats.
- Website building.
Those are both useful skill sets for people who aren’t full-time techies, the first perhaps best for those who are more quantitative and big-company-friendly, the second perhaps better for the creative and/or rebellious types.
So what SPECIFICALLY should one guide them to do? My initial thoughts include: Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, MicroStrategy, MySQL, Open source | 35 Comments |
dbShards — a lot like an MPP OLTP DBMS based on MySQL or PostgreSQL
I talked yesterday w/ Cory Isaacson, who runs CodeFutures, makers of dbShards. dbShards is a software layer that turns an ordinary DBMS (currently MySQL or PostgreSQL) into an MPP shared-nothing ACID-compliant OLTP DBMS. Technical highlights included: Read more
| Categories: dbShards and CodeFutures, Facebook, MySQL, OLTP, Parallelization, PostgreSQL | 3 Comments |
Kickfire unlikely to survive
Following up on a previous report of Kickfire’s troubles — a Kickfire customer tipped me off that Kickfire told him they’re selling their IP and engineers, and the Kickfire products will be discontinued.
At this time, I have no idea who the lucky buyer is.
Edit: We now know it’s Teradata.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Kickfire, Teradata | 12 Comments |
False-positive alerts, non-collaborative BI, inaccurate metrics, and what to do about them
I’ve been hinting at some points for quite a long time, without really spelling them out in written form. So let’s fix that. I believe:
- “Push” alerting technology could be much more granular and useful, but is being held back by the problem of false positives.
- Metrics passed down from on high didn’t work too well in Stalin’s USSR, and haven’t improved sufficiently since.
- A large, necessary piece of the solution to both problems is a great engine for setting and modifying metrics definitions.
I shall explain. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Data warehousing, MicroStrategy, Theory and architecture | 10 Comments |
Some interesting links
In no particular order: Read more