The essence of the Oracle Amazon cloud offering
OK. The press release adds color to what I previously posted about Oracle’s new Amazon cloud offering. Read more
| Categories: Cloud computing, Oracle | Leave a Comment |
Oracle announces an Amazon cloud offering
Per the Amazon Web Service Blog, Oracle announced that Oracle can be run in the Amazon cloud (i.e., on EC2, with EBS for persistent storage). Clustering is probably weak, however — e.g., there’s no RAC support, as per Oracle’s well-written FAQ. Perhaps not coincidentally, the FAQ seems to suggest that the primary use case at this time is for backup, and backup is generally a major point of emphasis on Oracle’s cloud computing page.
Of course, another use case could be development, but that depends in part on pricing. Of course, whether Oracle’s offering seems attractively priced compared with, for example, a similar one from EnterpriseDB and Elastra depends a lot on whether you’ve already negotiated an unlimited-use license for Oracle.
James Kobielus, who presumably was pre-briefed, has more to say.
| Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Cloud computing, Oracle | 1 Comment |
Database compression is heavily affected by the kind of data
I’ve written often of how different kinds or brands of data warehouse DBMS get very different compression figures. But I haven’t focused enough on how much compression figures can vary among different kinds of data. This was really brought home to me when Vertica told me that web analytics/clickstream data can often be compressed 60X in Vertica, while at the other extreme — some kind of floating point data, whose details I forget for now — they could only do 2.5X. Edit: Vertica has now posted much more accurate versions of those numbers. Infobright’s 30X compression reference at TradeDoubler seems to be for a clickstream-type app. Greenplum’s customer getting 7.5X — high for a row-based system — is managing clickstream data and related stuff. Bottom line:
When evaluating compression ratios — especially large ones — it is wise to inquire about the nature of the data.
| Categories: Data warehousing, Database compression, Greenplum, Infobright, Vertica Systems, Web analytics | 4 Comments |
Web analytics — clickstream and network event data
It should surprise nobody that web analytics – and specifically clickstream data — is one of the biggest areas for high-end data warehousing. For example:
- I believe that both of the previously mentioned petabyte+ databases on Greenplum will feature clickstream data.
- Aster Data’s largest disclosed database, by almost two orders of magnitude, is at MySpace.
- Clickstream analytics is a big application area for Vertica Systems.
- Clickstream analytics is a big application area for Netezza.
- Infobright’s customer success stories appear to be concentrated in clickstream analytics.
- Coral8 tells me that CEP is also being used for clickstream data, although I suspect that a lot of Coral8’s evidence in that regard comes from a single flagship account. Edit: Actually, Coral8 has a bunch of clickstream customers.
| Categories: Aleri and Coral8, Aster Data, Greenplum, Infobright, Netezza, Streaming and complex event processing (CEP), Vertica Systems, Web analytics | 2 Comments |
More Oracle announcement speculation
Like many other folks, Chris Mellor took a go at speculating about Oracle’s announcements this week. Some of his points are sloppy — e.g., he thinks compression necessarily requires hardware assistance — but he did make one interesting observation: Tea leaves suggest HP has a prominent role in something Oracle is announcing. But then, if you’ve been reading along, you already suspected that.
| Categories: Oracle | Leave a Comment |
Oracle announcements next week, data warehouse appliance, 11g R2 or otherwise
Eric Lai and Chris Kanarcus put up an article on Oracle’s announcements next week. Much of the speculation revolved around generic grid/clustering, with more detail than I posted yesterday. Most interesting to me was the last section of the article, which sounds as if it could be talking about the same thing Luke Lonergan referred to in a comment thread when he said:
Oracle is about to unveil a secret project that uses HP DL185 servers as storage devices with some predicate pushdowns to implement a data warehouse “appliance”.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Oracle | 1 Comment |
Netezza overseas
22% of Netezza’s revenue comes from outside the US, at least if we use last quarter’s figures as a guide. At first blush, that doesn’t sound like much. Indeed, percentage-wise it surely lags behind Teradata, Greenplum (which has sold a lot in Asia/Pacific under Netezza’s former head of that region), and a few smaller competitors headquartered outside the US. But a few conversations I had today suggest a rosier view. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Kognitio, Market share and customer counts, Netezza, Teradata | Leave a Comment |
Microsoft/DATAllegro time frame announced
Edit: Actually, an email did eventually wend its way to me about a day later, which evidently had run into major congestion somewhere in the intertubes.
My resolve to eschew scathing sarcasm is being sorely tested tonight. The lastest trial is my discovery that nobody thought to so much as email me a press release, let alone brief me, on Microsoft’s announcement of a timetable for DATAllegro/SQL Server integration. Per Ina Fried — with a hat tip to anonymous commenter L.J. — Microsoft says:
The final version of that product is slated for the first half of 2010, though Microsoft said it will begin giving customers and partners access to early “community technology preview” releases within the next 12 months.
| Categories: Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |
Netezza application areas
I’m at the Netezza “Enzee” user conference in Orlando. So one or more Netezza posts are in order.
One theme of the brief analyst meeting was Netezza’s increasing business focus on vertical markets. In particular, Netezza is hiring managers for a range of vertical markets. The commercial ones cited (at various levels of maturity) included: Read more
| Categories: Application areas, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Market share and customer counts, Netezza, Telecommunications | Leave a Comment |
More mysteries regarding Oracle CDR load speed
Last spring, DATAllegro user John Devolites of TEOCO told me of troubles his firm had had loading CDRs (Call Detail Records) into Oracle, and how those had been instrumental in his eventual adoption of DATAllegro. That claim was contemptously challenged in a couple of comment threads.
Well, tonight at the Netezza user conference, Netezza gave awards to its first customers. The very first to accept was Jim Hayden, who’d bought Netezza for a company called Vibrant Solutions, which coincidentally was later acquired by TEOCO itself. In front of hundreds of people, he talked about how, back in 2003, it had taken 23 hours to load 400 million CDRs into Oracle on Nextel’s behalf, but only 40 minutes on Netezza.
And I’ll erase the rest of what I’d drafted here, as it was dripping in sarcasm …
| Categories: Data warehousing, Netezza, Oracle, Telecommunications, TEOCO | 2 Comments |