Oracle TimesTen

Analysis of in-memory DBMS TimesTen. Related subjects include:

April 7, 2012

Many kinds of memory-centric data management

I’m frequently asked to generalize in some way about in-memory or memory-centric data management. I can start:

Getting more specific than that is hard, however, because:

Consider, for example, some of the in-memory data management ideas kicking around. Read more

May 23, 2011

Traditional databases will eventually wind up in RAM

In January, 2010, I posited that it might be helpful to view data as being divided into three categories:

I won’t now stand by every nuance in that post, which may differ slightly from those in my more recent posts about machine-generated data and poly-structured databases. But one general idea is hard to dispute:

Traditional database data — records of human transactional activity, referred to as “Human/Tabular data above” — will not grow as fast as Moore’s Law makes computer chips cheaper.

And that point has a straightforward corollary, namely:

It will become ever more affordable to put traditional database data entirely into RAM.  Read more

September 21, 2009

Notes on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 white paper

The Oracle Database 11g Release 2 white paper I cited a couple of weeks ago has evidently been edited, given that a phrase I quoted last month is no longer to be found. Anyhow, here are some quotes from and comments on what evidently is the latest version. Read more

December 29, 2008

Ordinary OLTP DBMS vs. memory-centric processing

A correspondent from China wrote in to ask about products that matched the following application scenario: Read more

January 16, 2008

The other shoe finally drops for Oracle and BEA

As previously noted, I’ve been writing about an Oracle/BEA merger since 2002. So like many observers, I find I have little more to say on the subject. Let’s go straight to the bullet points: Read more

December 21, 2007

IBM acquires SolidDB to compete with Oracle TimesTen

IBM is acquiring Solid Information Technology, makers of solidDB. Some quick comments:

Read more

June 20, 2007

SolidDB caching for DB2

It’s just at the proof-of-concept stage, but Solid has a nice write-up about SolidDB being used as a front-end cache for DB2. Well, it’s a marketing document, so of course there’s a lot of pabulum too, but interspersed there’s some real meat as well. Highlights include 40X throughput improvement and 1 millisecond average response time (something that clearly can’t be achieved with disk-centric technology alone).

Analogies to Oracle/TimesTen are probably not coincidental; this is exactly the upside scenario for the TimesTen acquisition, as well as being TimesTen’s biggest growth area towards the end of its stint as an independent company.

March 25, 2007

Oracle, Tangosol, objects, caching, and disruption

Oracle made a slick move in picking up Tangosol, a leader in object/data caching for all sorts of major OLTP apps. They do financial trading, telecom operations, big web sites (Fedex, Geico), and other good stuff. This is a reminder that the list of important memory-centric data handling technologies is getting fairly long, including:

And that’s just for OLTP; there’s a whole other set of memory-centric technologies for analytics as well.

When one connects the dots, I think three major points jump out:

  1. There’s a lot more to high-end OLTP than relational database management.
  2. Oracle is determined to be the leader in as many of those areas as possible.
  3. This all fits the market disruption narrative.

I write about Point #1 all the time. So this time around let me expand a little more on #2 and #3.
Read more

November 21, 2005

Is Oracle losing its edge?

Over in the Monash Report, I posed the question: Is Oracle losing its edge in DBMS? Here are some of the data points that make me suspect it has. A number of these points also apply to the other large mainstream DBMS vendors; a number, however, do not.

That’s a lot of evidence, even without mentioning threats from the open sourcers and the data warehouse appliance guys. So why am I not wholly convinced yet? Well, reasons include a variety of scalability features, extensibility features that are rivaled only by IBM’s, market share dominance on Linux, and Andy Mendelsohn. That’s a pretty compelling list too. Still, the Oracle colossus is teetering a little bit, and it’s not beyond imagination that some future earthquake could bring it crashing down.

November 14, 2005

Defining and surveying “Memory-centric data management”

I’m writing more and more about memory-centric data management technology these days, including in my latest Computerworld column. You may be wondering what that term refers to. Well, I’ve basically renamed what are commonly called “in-memory DBMS,” for what I think is a very good reason: Most of the products in the category aren’t true DBMS, aren’t wholly in-memory, or both! Indeed, if you catch me in a grouchy mood I might argue that “in-memory DBMS” is actually a contradiction in terms.

I’ll give a quick summary of the vendors and products I am focusing on in this newly-named category, and it should be clearer what I mean:

So there you have it. There are a whole lot of technologies out there that manage data in RAM, in ways that would make little or no sense if disks were more intimately involved. Conventional DBMS also try to exploit RAM and limit disk access, via caching; but generally the data access methods they use in RAM are pretty similar to those they use when going out to disk. So memory-centric systems can have a major advantage.

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