PostgreSQL can be used in a lot of different ways
The relational DBMS industry is filled with startups. In some way or other, most of them are based on or make use of the open source project PostgreSQL. (Not all, of course; exceptions include DATAllegro and Infobright, which are based on Ingres and MySQL respectively.) But how they use PostgreSQL varies greatly. Read more
| Categories: EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Greenplum, Open source, PostgreSQL, Vertica Systems | 10 Comments |
Microsoft SQL Server Data Services
As usual, Microsoft forgot to brief me, but Mary Jo Foley reports on Microsoft SQL Server Data Services. A look at the official site clarifies that this database-in-a-cloud offering uses “Microsoft SQL Server as a data storage node.” However, there seems to be a software layer on top of SQL Server providing scale-out and appropriate management.
In addition to the more-than-SQL-Server layer, there seems to be a less-than-SQL-Server aspect as well. In a particular, Microsoft SQL Server Data Services boasts “Support for simple types: string, numeric, datetime, boolean.” XML is the “primary wire format,” and hints dropped about the schema philosophy sound XMLish too.
Interestingly, Foley reports that Microsoft plans to offer an on-premises version of Microsoft SQL Server Data Services as well.
Who EnterpriseDB sells to
I previously wrote that EnterpriseDB-on-Elastra has very little enterprise traction, drawing most of its interest instead from online businesses or ISVs. Having used that as a starting point in a recent chat with EnterpriseDB marketing chief Derek Rodner, I can now add that overall:
- EnterpriseDB reports good traction with ISVs. In particular, those that resell Oracle would like a cheaper alternative. Sometimes, they can port their code with no rewriting at all.
- Online businesses of various kinds also are a significant fraction of the customer base.
- EnterpriseDB has some true large-enterprise customers — Derek rattled off some household names — but this isn’t yet the heart of its business.
- EnterpriseDB has an increasing business teleselling to SMBs.
| Categories: Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Mid-range | Leave a Comment |
Odd article on Sybase IQ and columnar systems
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.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Columnar database management, Data warehousing, Pricing, Specific users, Sybase | 5 Comments |
eBay OLTP architecture
I’ve posted a couple times about eBay’s analytics side. As a companion, Don Burleson pointed me at a fascinating November, 2006 slide presentation outlining eBay’s transactional architecture and evolution. Highlights include:
- A whole lot of manual slicing of Oracle databases, so as not to exceed their capacity.
- A whole lot of careful design and ordering of transactions.
- Putting all the business logic in the application tier, with a custom O/R mapper. There’s lots of caching there, but very little state.
The presentation has a bunch of specific numbers, in case anybody wants to dive in.
| Categories: eBay, OLTP, Specific users | Leave a Comment |
Introduction to Exasol
I had a non-technical introduction today to Exasol, a data warehouse specialist that has gotten a little buzz recently for publishing TPC-H results even faster than ParAccel’s. Here are some highlights:
- Exasol was founded back in 2000.
- Exasol is a German company, with 60 employees. While I didn’t ask, the vast majority are surely German.
- Exasol has two customers. 6-8 more are Coming Real Soon. Most or all of those are in Germany, although one may be in Asia.
- Karstadt (big German retailer) has had Exasol deployed for 3 years. The other deployed customer is the German subsidiary of data provider IMS Health.
- [Redacted for confidentiality] is a strategic investor in and partner of Exasol. [Redacted for confidentiality]’s only competing partnership is with Oracle.
- Exasol’s system is more completely written from scratch than many. E.g., all they use from Linux are some drivers, and maybe a microkernel.
- Exasol runs in-memory. There doesn’t seem to be a disk-centric mode.
- Exasol’s data access methods are sort of like columnar, but not exactly. I look forward to a more technical discussion to sort that out.
- Exasol’s claimed typical compression is 5-7X. As in the Vertica story, database operations are carried out on compressed data.
- Exasol says it has performed a very fast TPC-H inhouse at the 30 terabyte level. However, its deployed sites are probably a lot smaller than that. IMS Health is cited in its literature as 145 gigabytes.
- Oracle and Microsoft are listed as Exasol partners, so there may be some kind of plug-compatibility or back-end processing story.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Exasol, Specific users | Leave a Comment |
The biggest eBay database
There’s been some confusion over my post about eBay’s multiple petabytes of data. So to clarify, let me say:
- eBay’s figure of >1.4 petabytes of data — for its largest single analytic database — counts disks or something, not raw user data.
- I previously published a strong conjecture that the database vendor in question was Teradata, which is definitely an eBay supplier. In particular, it is definitely not an Oracle data warehouse.
- While eBay isn’t saying who it is either — not even off-the-record — the 50%ish compression figures they experience just happen to map well to Teradata’s usual range.
- Edit: Just to be clear — not that there was any doubt, but I have reconfirmed that eBay is a Teradata user, in or including eBay’s Paypal division.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, eBay, Specific users, Teradata | 1 Comment |
All should be functioning again
The server move has completed. The brief outage is behind us. Comments have been turned back on. All SHOULD be well.
I plan to write a little more soon about web hosting over on the Monash Report, if for no other reason than that what’s there is not wholly accurate and needs updating.
| Categories: About this blog | Leave a Comment |
Comments off Friday night
I’m moving servers again. In connection with that, I’m turning comments off for a few hours.
Everything SHOULD be fine again by Saturday.
| Categories: About this blog | Leave a Comment |
ObjectGrid versus H-Store
Billy Newport of IBM sees a lot of similarities between his app-server-based product ObjectGrid and H-Store. In both cases, constrained tree schemas are assumed, and OLTP performance goodness ensues. A couple of points I noted on a quick skim through his blog:
- He calls out RAM consumption as a challenge for this kind of architecture.
- He points out that it’s a big advantage to have data called and used in the same address space.
Being based in RAM is obviously a huge part of the H-Store scheme. But so is having transaction execution be close to the database.
IBM now has both ObjectGrid and a memory-centric DBMS (solidDB) that they’ve been using as a front end for DBMS. Integration of the two could be pretty interesting.