It’s a good week for puns …
… unless you think that is inherently an oxymoron. I thought I was doing well catching and expanding on a clever pop culture reference. But the folks at columnar DBMS start-up Vertica Systems may have topped that with their slogan
The tables have turned
Ouch.
| Categories: Columnar database management, Humor, Vertica Systems | Leave a Comment |
MySQL IPO — not so fast
MySQL told Computer Business Review they’re thinking strongly of an IPO this year, but also wouldn’t mind waiting. Frankly, I think they shouldn’t come public until they can prove solid acceptance of Version 5, because Version 4 remains in too many ways an embarrassment.
Also, investors need a chance to see whether MySQL’s new enterprise all-you-can-eat pricing scheme is a success, both financially and in terms of service delivery.
| Categories: MySQL, Open source | 4 Comments |
Jim Gray missing at sea
While scattering his mother’s ashes, ironically. Let’s hope this isn’t as bad as it sounds, and that he comes home safely, soon.
Edit: As of Thursday morning, the news is bad.
| Categories: Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |
EnterpriseDB’s Oracle clone — fact or fiction?
PostgreSQL-based EnterpriseDB is attracting a bit of attention. Philip Howard, as he does of most products, takes a favorable view. Seth Grimes regards the company as dirty, rotten liars. The company suggests that Everquest gameplay* runs on an RDBMS. I find this inherently implausible, and hence am starting out with a skeptical view of the company’s marketing messages.
*As in character movement. The idea that character inventory is stored in an RDBMS I find vastly more credible. Ditto other less volatile aspects of character state.
Read more
| Categories: ANTs Software, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Games and virtual worlds, Mid-range, OLTP, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | 4 Comments |
Data warehouse appliance hardware strategies
Recently, I’ve done extensive research into the hardware strategies of computing appliance vendors, across multiple functional areas. Data warehousing, firewall/unified threat management, antispam, data integration – you name it, I talked to them. Of course, each vendor has a unique twist. But some architectural groupings definitely emerged.
The most common approaches seem to be:
Type 1: Custom assembly from off-the-shelf parts. In this model, the only unusual (but still off-the-shelf) parts are usually in the area of network acceleration (or occasionally encryption). Also, the box may be balanced differently than standard systems, in terms of compute power and/or reliability.
Type 2 (Virtual): We don’t need no stinkin’ custom hardware. In this model, the only “appliancy” features are in the areas of easy deployment, custom operating systems, and/or preconfigured hardware.
And of course there are also appliances of Type 0: Custom hardware including proprietary ASICs or FPGAs.
Different markets had different emphases; e.g., firewall appliances are typically Type 1, while antispam devices cluster in Type 2. But the data warehouse appliance market is highly diverse, which maybe shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the revenue market leader is non-appliance software vendor Oracle, while noisy upstart Netezza is famous for its FPGA. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Greenplum, IBM and DB2, Kognitio, Netezza, Teradata | 8 Comments |
And then there were two: DATAllegro seems to be going with standard hardware
A while ago – for example, in a comment dated July 9, 2006 — CEO Stuart Frost of DATAllegro hinted that the company might port its software to commodity hardware before long. If this user story is to be believed, that has now happened. (Specific quote: “the Datallegro system is based on Dell and EMC hardware …”) Officially, the company is doing a Sgt. Schultz on the subject. But the evidence is pretty clear. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, DATAllegro | 3 Comments |
Can MySQL scale?
Making the rounds of cyberspace is a report by MediaTemple, a hosting company, on how it believes it will solve its difficulties with grid-based MySQL hosting.
Takeaways include:
- MySQL has real issues with handling diverse, high-volume workloads.
- When MySQL gets overloaded, database corruption is routine.
- Some people write really, really bad MySQL web applications.
With the possible exception of #2, I doubt any of this surprises anybody.
| Categories: MySQL, Open source | 6 Comments |
Arguments AGAINST data warehouse appliances
Data warehouse appliance opponents like to argue that history is conclusively on their side. Database machine maker Britton-Lee, eventually bought by Teradata, fizzled. LISP machines were a spectacular failure. Rational Software’s origins as a special-purpose Ada machine maker had to be renounced before the company could succeed.
But the true story is more mixed. Teradata continues to this day as a major data warehouse technology player, and as far as I’m concerned Teradata indeed makes appliances. If we look further than the applications stack, we find that appliances actually occupy a large and growing share of the computing market. So a persuasive anti-appliance argument has to do more than just invoke the names of Britton-Lee and Symbolics.
I just ran across an article by MIT professor Samuel Madden that attempts to make such a case. And his MIT colleague Mike Stonebraker made similar arguments to me a few days ago. They are not wholly unbiased; indeed, both are involved in Vertica Systems. With that caveat, they have an interesting three-part argument:
Who’s who in columnar relational database management systems
The best known columnar RDBMS is surely Sybase’s IQ Accelerator, evolved from a product acquired in the mid-1990s. Problem – it doesn’t have a shared-nothing architecture of the sort needed to exploit grid/blade technology. Whoops. The other recognized player is SAND, but I don’t know a lot about them. Based on their website, it would seem that grids and compression play a big part in their story. Less established but pretty interesting is Kognitio, who are just beginning to make marketing noise outside the UK. SAP’s BI Accelerator is also a compressed columnar system, but operates entirely in-memory and hence is limited in possible database size. Mike Stonebraker’s startup Vertica is of course the new kid on the block, and there are other columnar startups as well whose names currently escape me.
| Categories: Data warehousing, Investment research and trading, Kognitio, SAP AG, TransRelational | 3 Comments |
Are row-oriented RDBMS obsolete?
If Mike Stonebraker is to be believed, the era of columnar data stores is upon us.
Whether or not you buy completely into Mike’s claims, there certainly are cool ideas in his latest columnar offering, from startup Vertica Systems. The Vertica corporate site offers little detail, but Mike tells me that the product’s architecture closely resembles that of C-Store, which is described in this November, 2005 paper.
The core ideas behind Vertica’s product are as follows. Read more