April 5th, 2008 Curt Monash
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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Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, DATAllegro, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Dataupia, Greenplum, HP and Neoview, IBM and DB2, Infobright and Brighthouse, Kognitio and WX2, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Netezza, Oracle, ParAccel, Relational database management systems, Sybase, Teradata | 4 Comments »
March 4th, 2008 Curt Monash
Intelligent Enterprise has an article on Sybase IQ and columnar systems that leaves me shaking my head. E.g., it ends by saying Netezza has a columnar architecture (uh, no). It also quotes an IBM exec as saying only 10-20% of what matters in a data warehouse DBMS is performance (already an odd claim), and then has him saying columnar only provides a 10% performance gain (let’s be generous and hope that’s a misquote).
Also from the article — and this part seems more credible — is:
“Sybase IQ revenues were up 70% last year,” said Richard Pledereder, VP of engineering. … Sybase now claims 1,200 Sybase IQ customers. It runs large data warehouses powered by big, multiprocessor servers. Priced at $45,000 per CPU, those IQ customers now account for a significant share of Sybase’s revenues, although the company won’t break down revenues by market segment.
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Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, Columnar architectures, Data warehousing, Relational database management systems, Specific users, Sybase | 1 Comment »
February 8th, 2008 Curt Monash
Please do not rely on the parts of the post below that are about ParAccel. See our February 18 post about ParAccel instead.
I’ve already posted about a chat I had with Mike Stonebraker regarding Vertica yesterday. I naturally raised the subject of load speed, unaware that Mike’s colleague Stan Zlodnik had posted at length about load speed the day before. Given that post, it seems timely to go into a bit more detail, and in particular to address three questions:
- Can columnar DBMS do operational BI?
- Can columnar DBMS do ELT (Extract-Load-Transform, as opposed to ETL)?
- Are columnar DBMS’ load speeds a problem other than in issues #1 and #2?
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Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Columnar architectures, Data warehousing, Database theory and practice, EII, ETL, and/or EAI, Michael Stonebraker, ParAccel, Sybase, Vertica Systems | No Comments »
February 7th, 2008 Curt Monash
I chatted with Andy Ellicott and Mike Stonebraker of Vertica today. Some of the content is embargoed until February 19 (for TDWI), but here are some highlights of the rest.
- Vertica now is “approaching” 50 paid customers, up from 15 or so in early November. (Compared to most of Vertica’s fellow data warehouse specialists, that’s a lot.) Many — perhaps most — of these customers are hedge funds or telcos.
- Vertica’s typical lag from sale to deployment is about one quarter.
- Vertica’s typical initial selling price is $250K. Or maybe it’s $100-150K. The Vertica guys are generally pretty forthcoming, but pricing is an exception. Whatever they charge, it’s strictly per terabyte of user data. They think they are competitive with other software vendors, and cheaper, all-in, than appliance vendors.
- One subject on which they’re totally non-forthcoming (lawyers’ orders) is the recent patent lawsuit filed by Sybase. They wouldn’t even say whether they thought it was bogus because they didn’t infringe, or whether they thought it was bogus because the patent shouldn’t have been granted.
- Average Vertica database size is a little under 10 terabytes of user data, with many examples in the 15-20 Tb range. Lots of customers plan to expand to 50-100 Tb.
- Vertica claims sustainable load speeds of 3-5 megabytes/sec/node, irrespective of database size. Data is sucked into RAM uncompressed, then written out a gig/node at a time, compressed. Gigabyte chunks are then merged on disk, which is superfast as it doesn’t involve sorting. (30 megabytes/second.) Mike insists this doesn’t compromise compression.
We also addressed the subject of Vertica’s schema assumptions, but I’ll leave that to another post.
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Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Michael Stonebraker, Relational database management systems, Sybase, Vertica Systems | 4 Comments »
December 21st, 2007 Curt Monash
IBM is acquiring Solid Information Technology, makers of solidDB. Some quick comments:
- solidDB is actually a very interesting hybrid disk/in-memory memory-centric database management system. However, the press release announcing the deal makes it sound as if solidDB is in-memory only.
- That strongly suggests that IBM is buying Solid mainly to compete with Oracle TimesTen. As of last June, solidDB was already IBM’s TimesTen answer via a partnership; this deal just solidifies that arrangement.
- This probably isn’t good news for Solid’s MySQL engine. That’s a pity, since solidDB technically has the potential to be the best MySQL engine around.
- Notwithstanding IBM’s presumed intentions, Solid’s main market success historically is as an embedded system in telecommunications equipment, network software, and similar systems.
- Last year I wrote a white paper on memory-centric data management, showcasing four products. IBM now has bought two of them, namely Solid’s and Applix’s (via Cognos).
- Comparisons to IBM’s embedded Java DBMS Cloudscape are pointless. That’s just a failed product vs. solidDB or Sybase SQL Anywhere, and IBM long ago cut its losses.
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Posted in Cognos and Applix TM1, IBM and DB2, Memory-centric data management, OLTP database management, Sybase, solidDB | 2 Comments »
December 14th, 2007 Curt Monash
There are at least 16 different vendors offering appliances and/or software that do database management primarily for analytic purposes.* That’s a lot to keep up with,. So I’ve thrown together a little overview of the analytic data management landscape, liberally salted with links to information about specific vendors, products, or technical issues. In some ways, this is a companion piece to my prior post about data warehouse appliance myths and realities.
*And that’s just the tabular/alphanumeric guys. Add in text search and you run the total a lot higher.
Numerous data warehouse specialists offer traditional row-based relational DBMS architectures, but optimize them for analytic workloads. These include Teradata, Netezza, DATAllegro, Greenplum, Dataupia, and SAS. All of those except SAS are wholly or primarily vendors of MPP/shared-nothing data warehouse appliances. EDIT: See the comment thread for a correction re Kognitio.
Numerous data warehouse specialists offer column-based relational DBMS architectures. These include Sybase (with the Sybase IQ product, originally from Expressway), Vertica, ParAccel, Infobright, Kognitio (formerly White Cross), and Sand. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, Cognos and Applix TM1, DATAllegro, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Dataupia, Greenplum, IBM and DB2, Kognitio and WX2, Netezza, Oracle, ParAccel, Relational database management systems, SAS Institute, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica Systems | 10 Comments »
October 19th, 2007 Curt Monash
It’s early autumn, the leaves are turning in New England, and Gartner has issued another Magic Quadrant for data warehouse DBMS. The big winners vs. last year are Greenplum and, secondarily, Sybase. Teradata continues to lead. Oracle has also leapfrogged IBM, and there are various other minor adjustments as well, among repeat mentionees Netezza, DATAllegro, Sand, Kognitio, and MySQL. HP isn’t on the radar yet; ditto Vertica. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Analytics and analytic technologies, DATAllegro, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, HP and Neoview, IBM and DB2, Kognitio and WX2, MySQL, Netezza, Oracle, Relational database management systems, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica Systems | 6 Comments »
October 9th, 2007 Curt Monash
Usually, I don’t engage in the kind of high-speed quick-response blogging I have over the past couple of days from the Teradata Partners conference (and more generally have for the past week or so). And I’m not sure it’s working out so well.
For example, the claim that Teradata has surpassd the one-petabyte mark comes as quite a surprise to variety of Teradata folks, not to mention at least one reliable outside anonymous correspondent. That claim may indeed be true about raw disk space on systems sold. But the real current upper limit, according to CTO Todd Walter,* is 5-700 terabytes of user data. He thinks half a dozen or so customers are in that range. I’d guess quite strongly that three of those are Wal-Mart, eBay, and an unspecified US intelligence agency.
*Teradata seems to have quite a few CTOs. But I’ve seen things much sillier than that in the titles department, and accordingly shan’t scoff further — at least on that particular subject. 
On the other hand, if anybody did want to buy a 10 petabyte system, Teradata could ship them one. And by the way, the Teradata people insist Sybase’s claims in the petabyte area are quite bogus. Teradata claims to have had bigger internal systems tested earlier than the one Sybase writes about.
Technorati Tags: Teradata, petabyte, data warehouse, Sybase, Wal-Mart, eBay
Posted in Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Specific users, Sybase, Teradata | No Comments »
May 29th, 2007 Curt Monash
EMC has announced a machine — a virtual tape library — that supposedly stores 1.8 petabytes of data. Even though that’s only 584 terabytes uncompressed, it shows that the 1 petabyte barrier will be broken soon no matter how unhyped the measurement.
I just recently encountered some old notes in which Sybase proudly announced a “1 gigabyte challenge.” The idea was that 1 gig was a breakthrough size for business databases.
Time flies.
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Technorati Tags: EMC
Posted in Database compression, Database theory and practice, Sybase | No Comments »
April 18th, 2007 Curt Monash
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 the rest of this entry »
Posted in EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, IBM and DB2, Ingres, Intersystems and Cache', Microsoft and SQL*Server, Mid-range DBMS, MySQL, OLTP database management, Open source RDBMS, Oracle, Progress, Apama, and DataDirect, Relational database management systems, Sybase, solidDB | 7 Comments »
April 11th, 2007 Curt Monash
The fourth Monash Letter is now posted for Monash Advantage members (just 3 pages this time). It’s about forthcoming M&A in data warehouse DBMS, something that seems likely just because of the large number of current players. Some of the observations are:
- Oracle needs to buy somebody, because of its rather dire product problems at the data warehouse high end. And it’s very much in keeping with their recent behavior to do so.
- Teradata could be acquired sooner than people think. While there are tax considerations preventing an outright sale, these should be obviated if all of the current NCR is taken private. What’s more NCR minus Teradata is exactly the kind of healthy, slow-growth, niche company that private equity loves.
- DATAllegro is a natural merger partner for somebody. Their technical differentiation is almost DBMS-independent, so it could be easy to roll them into a larger overall product strategy. And they have enough market traction to have proved some non-trivial value.
- Kognitio seems desperate these days, with several odd or even underhanded marketing tactics. But they do have MPP bitmap software, something Sybase sorely lacks. So there’s an obvious potential combination between those two.
Technorati Tags: NCR, Teradata, Oracle, DATAllegro, Kognitio, Sybase, private equity, data warehouse, database management, software
Posted in DATAllegro, Data warehousing, Kognitio and WX2, Oracle, Relational database management systems, Sybase, Teradata | 2 Comments »
March 24th, 2007 Curt Monash
In my opinion, the key part of Mike Stonebraker’s fascinating note on data compression was (emphasis mine):
The standard wisdom in most row stores is to use block compression. Hence, a storage block is compressed using a single technique (say Lempel-Ziv or dictionary). The technique chosen then compresses all the attributes in all the columns which occur on the block. In contrast, Vertica compresses a storage block that only contains one attribute. Hence, it can use a different compression scheme for each attribute. Obviously a compression scheme that is type-specific will beat an implementation that is “one size fits all”.
It is possible for a row store to use a type-specific compression scheme. However, if there are 50 attributes in a record, then it must remember the state for 50 type-specific implementations, and complexity increases significantly.
In addition, all row stores we are familiar with decompress each storage block on access, so that the query executor processes uncompressed tuples. In contrast, the Vertica executor processes compressed tuples. This results in better L2 cache locality, less main memory copying and generally much better performance.
Of course, any row store implementation can rewrite their executor to run on compressed data. However, this is a rewrite – and a lot of work.
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Posted in Columnar architectures, Data warehousing, Database compression, Sybase, Vertica Systems | 6 Comments »