Fun with quotes in the VectorWise press release
Ingres forgot to prebrief me on the VectorWise announcement, and despite valiant efforts hasn’t succeeded in connecting with me since they realized the lapse. Meanwhile, I took a look at the VectorWise press release, and found the quotes to be somewhat amusing.
Daniel Abadi was quoted as saying:
“VectorWise … is now proven to be a terrific fit as database technology underpinning large-scale HadoopDB applications.”
notwithstanding that HadoopDB has never been used for a production application, large-scale or otherwise. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is quite emphatic in noting he didn’t actually say that.*
*Daniel actually said “has proven,” which to him means “[not] officially proven, but proven in a more colloquial sense.”
Meanwhile, a quote from the Rohatyn Group starts:
“For the past 20 years, we’ve been searching for the killer database …”
notwithstanding that the Rohatyn Group hasn’t been around for even 10 years, let alone 20. (I infer this from the LinkedIn profile of a “founder” who’s been working there only since 2002.) However, Peter Boncz assures me via e-mail that this is a genuine quote even so, and speculates quite reasonably that this database quest started at some other entity.
Otherwise, the quotes are the usual stuff, with highlights including:
- At least some queries run much faster on VectorWise than they do on a non-analytic DBMS.
- A couple of system integration partners are enthused about how happy their VectorWise customers will be if and when they ever have any.
- Ingres and VectorWise executives think their product is really cool.
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8 Responses to “Fun with quotes in the VectorWise press release”
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Ingres fixed the version of the press release on their site at my request.
Press release issues aside, we’ve been very impressed with the VectorWise technology — and the performance of the HadoopDB-Ingres Vectorwise combination has been very impressive in my lab — but this combination has not left the research lab setting yet.
Just so I’m clear on this, you say only that Ingres “forgot” to prebrief you? You would have sneared at their announcement even if they’d paid a fee to have you look at it ahead of time then?
People gotta eat, we know that. There’s all kinds of demands on your time and there’s surely a market rate for your time. I could understand why you’d ignore one announcement to concentrate on another you’d been paid to study.
What I’m not sure about is why you’d take the time to snear at this one for free. You don’t do this stuff as a hobby. I’d hate to see anyone ask if a fee is required to avoid adverse coverage from you.
random – but i also found a reference to hadoop in the dead sea scrolls, something about ‘great potential…’ but then the whole right side of the scroll is disintegrated, so i can’t see the benchmarks…
Well, what can I say. Daniel’s quote should never have been altered – and I am glad that it was resolved quickly.
We are very glad that Ingres VectorWise and HadoopDB turned out to work together so well, and would love to see HadoopDB grow, such that large-scale applications of HadoopDB can soon come into production – just as the first version of the quote might have seemed to allude to (ehem).
I do not take offense at Curt at all; he has been very correct in his reporting on Ingres VectorWise so far, without any paid relationship between him with Ingres or VectorWise. And as a matter of principle, I think that technical geeks should have the right to poke fun at marketing folks once in a while.
It has been a constant in our preview and beta programs that the users of Ingres VectorWise have acclaimed its speed. The language Warren Master of used, however, is so fantastic, that I think even the most slick marketeer who would be inventing/suggesting quotes would have found it over-top-top. It is original.
Finally, in this video, Warren Master indeed confirms what Curt says, that the Rohatyn Group (a hedge fund) was founded in 2003:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9rkO7YrCCc
.. and of course he talks Ingres VectorWise.
Roy,
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a press release with a quote — from somebody I knew — that just sounded like a misquote. Indeed, the previous example is the one I blogged much more extensively about, linked at the end of the post above.
Meanwhile, I just found it weird that an outfit that sounded like it might have been named after Felix Rohatyn was claimed to have been founded long before Rohatyn stopped work for Lehman Brothers, so I got curious. Now, for all I know it’s named instead after his brother or son or second cousin once removed … but by then I’d looked it up. 😉
You are correct Rohatyn was started in 2003, There was a typo in the quote, the “we” was supposed to be “I” as in “I have been searching for the killer db for the past 20 years “.
Thanks, Warren. 🙂
I wouldn’t have bothered calling out your quote if it weren’t for the more serious error with Abadi (which they mirrored on their website).
[…] 2 years ago, I simply said “What Gartner said in connection with Ingres is too inaccurate to deserve detailed attention.” This year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management isn’t that bad on the subject of Actian,* but it’s not great either. Writing mainly about Actian’s VectorWise, Gartner dings it for both features and bugginess, and correctly notes that VectorWise is only suitable for fairly small data warehouses. But Gartner gives VectorWise higher marks than Exasol even so. Gartner also writes that VectorWise has a “long tradition of having loyal supporters”, notwithstanding that VectorWise’s initial release was less than 3 years ago. […]