ANTs’ memory-centric characteristics to the fore?
An eWeek article suggests that ANTs is repositioning with a strong emphasis on memory-centricity. ANTs’ website, frankly, doesn’t support this theory, giving a more balanced tech overview in line with how they pitched me in a briefing last November. Still, it’s an interesting possibility to watch.
The main focus of the article actually wasn’t ANTs, but rather SAP’s wildest dreams in expanding the scope of its BI Accelerator technology. But the new-to-me part was the positioning of ANTs.
| Categories: ANTs Software, Memory-centric data management, SAP AG | 2 Comments |
Informatica’s SaaS/Outsourcing story
The coolest part of Informatica’s visit today was the new SaaS story. Naturally, they’re starting with Salesforce.com, but they hope to use the technology they’re developing for Salesforce with other SaaS vendors, with Business Process Outsourcers, and with anybody else who needs robust cross-enterprise data integration. I don’t actually think there’s a lot of hard technology there; nonetheless, somebody had to build it. And they apparently have, in two main parts.
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| Categories: EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Informatica | 2 Comments |
Informatica’s general story
Informatica came by today. In general their story is: Data integration is very important; all vendors except Informatica and IBM/Ascential are low end; IBM/Ascential is confused; most BI vendors except Business Objects are likely to follow Hyperion’s lead in partnering with them. Read more
| Categories: EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Informatica | 2 Comments |
Amazon’s version of DBMS2
Last year, I pointed out that Amazon has a highly diversified DBMS strategy. Now Mike Vizard has a great interview with Werner Vogel, Amazon’s CTO, where he unearths a lot more detail. And it turns out that Amazon has been a hardcore adopter of DBMS2, since long before DBMS2 was named.
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| Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Database diversity, NoSQL, Specific users, Theory and architecture | Leave a Comment |
Solid’s MySQL engine
Solid Information Technology is making the beta of its MySQL engine available for download midday on Tuesday. So I talked with them today, mercifully unembargoed. Here’s the story.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source | 4 Comments |
How and where to deploy business rules
James Taylor can be something of an extremist in his advocacy of inference engines, but I think this post about how to deploy business rules is spot-on. The three points I particularly liked were:
- “Don’t underestimate how much change you might actually want in apparently “fixed” rules.” Rules should be managed by a flexible tool for specification, development, and/or maintenance. Relational purists sometimes advocate putting them under direct control of the DBMS; I disagree strongly.
- “An effective way to combine business rules and BPEL model-driven rules is to use decision services in conditions.”
- “Using templates to control which parts of which rules can be edited by a given group of business users is key to delivering agility.”
| Categories: Theory and architecture | Leave a Comment |
Tom Kyte said it more concisely
Mark Whitehorn had a good article on the importance of horses-for-courses context. But Tom Kyte said the same thing more concisely:
I believe strongly – and more strongly every day – that there are only two possible answers to a “first question”. They are:
- Why
- It Depends
That said, I suspect that I agree with Tom more emphatically than he himself does. 😉 At least when it comes to the relative superiority of various data models …
| Categories: Theory and architecture | Leave a Comment |
Multivalue in Access triggers religious war
The Register managed to inflame the faithful on all sides with its comments on the addition of multivalue datatypes to Access. Trying to soothe(?) matters, Mark Whitehorn makes some astute comments about data models in general. One of my favorite parts is some armchair psychology about people who, having learned one complex system, grow attached to it, regard it as the One True Way, and regard all alternatives as the work of the Devil. My other favorite part is this analogy:
| Categories: Theory and architecture | 1 Comment |
Firebird, nee Interbase
Apparently, Interbase has morphed into Firebird. Interbase was an early RDBMS, owned by Borland, occasionally touted as the next great DBMS contender, and early to be open-sourced. That’s about as much as I remember about it. There were a couple of features on which it was earlier than the big boys — BLOBs, maybe? — but I imagine that’s very old news by now. And indeed the product doesn’t seem to be terribly up to date at this point.
So are there any Firebird partisans out there who’d like to tell me what’s so great about Firebird? Thanks in advance, and I’m especially grateful for the flame-free nature of your expected contribution.
| Categories: Open source | 5 Comments |
Ingres’s questionable target market
Eric Lai of Computerworld interviewed Roger Burkhardt, new CEO of Ingres, and obviously did a bang-up job of asking him the tough “Who really are your target customers, and why would they buy from you?” questions. The answer, so far as I can tell, is “Large financial institutions writing new RDBMS apps that don’t need up-to-date functionality and don’t want to pay Oracle’s license fees.” Up to a point, that makes sense. Except for the “financial institutions” qualifier, it’s actually pretty obvious. I can’t imagine why any other new users would buy Ingres, which has been ever the bridesmaid, never the bride for the past 20 years.
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| Categories: Actian and Ingres, Open source | 1 Comment |