Introduction to Deep Information Sciences and DeepDB

I talked Friday with Deep Information Sciences, makers of DeepDB. Much like TokuDB — albeit with different technical strategies — DeepDB is a single-server DBMS in the form of a MySQL engine, whose technology is concentrated around writing indexes quickly. That said:

  • DeepDB’s indexes can help you with analytic queries; (more...)

Appliances, clusters and clouds

I believe:

  • The trend to clustered computing is sustainable.
  • The trend to appliances is also sustainable.
  • The “single” enterprise cluster is almost as much of a pipe dream as the single enterprise database.

I shall explain.

Arguments for hosting applications on some kind of cluster include:

One database to rule them all?

Perhaps the single toughest question in all database technology is: Which different purposes can a single data store serve well? — or to phrase it more technically — Which different usage patterns can a single data store support efficiently? Ted Codd was on multiple sides of that issue, first suggesting (more...)

Notes and links, February 17, 2013

1. It boggles my mind that some database technology companies still don’t view compression as a major issue. Compression directly affects storage and bandwidth usage alike — for all kinds of storage (potentially including RAM) and for all kinds of bandwidth (network, I/O, and potentially on-server).

Trading off less-than-maximal compression (more...)

Key questions when selecting an analytic RDBMS

I recently complained that the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS conflates many use cases into one set of rankings. So perhaps now would be a good time to offer some thoughts on how to tell use cases apart. Assuming you know that you really want to manage your (more...)

Comments on Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — evaluations

To my taste, the most glaring mis-rankings in the 2012/2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management are that it is too positive on Kognitio and too negative on Infobright. Secondarily, it is too negative on HP Vertica, and too positive on ParAccel and Actian/VectorWise. So let’s consider those (more...)

Comments on Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — concepts

The 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems is out. I’ll split my comments into two posts — this one on concepts, and a companion on specific vendor evaluations.

Links:

  • Maintaining working links to Gartner Magic Quadrants is an adventure. But as of early February, 2013, this (more...)

NewSQL thoughts

I plan to write about several NewSQL vendors soon, but first here’s an overview post. Like “NoSQL”, the term “NewSQL” has an identifiable, recent coiner — Matt Aslett in 2011 — yet a somewhat fluid meaning. Wikipedia suggests that NewSQL comprises three things:

Some trends that will continue in 2013

I’m usually annoyed by lists of year-end predictions. Still, a reporter asked me for some, and I found one kind I was comfortable making.

Trends that I think will continue in 2013 include:

Growing attention to machine-generated data. Human-generated data grows at the rate business activity does, plus 0-25%. Machine-generated (more...)

Notes on Microsoft SQL Server

I’ve been known to gripe that covering big companies such as Microsoft is hard. Still, Doug Leland of Microsoft’s SQL Server team checked in for phone calls in August and again today, and I think I got enough to be worth writing about, albeit at a survey level only,

Subjects (more...)