Open source
Discussion of relational database management systems that are offered through some version of open source licensing. Related subjects include:
Infobright blog update
I often offer that, if a company puts up a sufficiently good blog post, I’ll link to it. Well, I just noticed that Infobright CEO Mark Burton (somewhere along the way he seems to have dropped the “interim”) put up an excellent post last month.
Highlights on the market share/sector side include: Read more
| Categories: Columnar database management, Data mart outsourcing, Data warehousing, Infobright, Log analysis, Market share and customer counts, Open source, Web analytics | 1 Comment |
Some NoSQL links
I plan to post a few things soon about MongoDB, Cassandra, and NoSQL in general. So I’m poking around a bit reading stuff on the subjects. Here are some links I found. Read more
| Categories: Amazon and its cloud, Cassandra, Continuent, Google, MySQL, NoSQL, Open source, RDF and graphs, Tokutek and TokuDB | 5 Comments |
Cassandra and the NoSQL scalable OLTP argument
Todd Hoff put up a provocative post on High Scalability called MySQL and Memcached: End of an Era? The post itself focuses on observations like:
- Facebook invented and is adopting Cassandra.
- Twitter is adopting Cassandra.
- Digg is adopting Cassandra.
- LinkedIn invented and is adopting Voldemort.
- Gee, it seems as if the super-scalable website biz has moved beyond MySQL/Memcached.
But in addition, he provides a lot of useful links, which DBMS-oriented folks such as myself might have previously overlooked. Read more
| Categories: Cassandra, Data models and architecture, NoSQL, OLTP, Open source, Parallelization, Specific users, Theory and architecture | 16 Comments |
Quick thoughts on the StreamBase Component Exchange
Streambase is announcing something called the StreamBase Component Exchange, for developers to exchange components to be used with the StreamBase engine, presumably on an open source basis. I simultaneously think:
- This is a good idea, and many software vendors should do it if they aren’t already.
- It’s no big deal.
For reasons why, let me quote an email I just sent to an inquiring reporter:
- StreamBase sells mainly to the financial services and intelligence community markets. Neither group will share much in the way of core algorithms.
- But both groups are pretty interested in open source software even so. (I think for both the price and customizability benefits.)
- Open source software commonly gets community contributions for connectors, adapters, and (national) language translations.
- But useful contributions in other areas are much rarer.
- Linden Labs is one of StreamBase’s few significant customers outside its two core markets.
- All of the above are consistent with the press release (which quotes only one StreamBase customer — guess who?).
| Categories: Games and virtual worlds, Investment research and trading, Open source, StreamBase, Streaming and complex event processing (CEP) | 8 Comments |
Intelligent Enterprise’s Editors’/Editor’s Choice list for 2010
As he has before, Intelligent Enterprise Editor Doug Henschen
- Personally selected annual lists of 12 “Most influential” companies and 36 “Companies to watch” in analytics- and database-related sectors.
- Made it clear that these are his personal selections.
- Nonetheless has called it an Editors’ Choice list, rather than Editor’s Choice. 🙂
(Actually, he’s really called it an “award.”)
Comments on the Gartner 2009/2010 Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant
February, 2011 edit: I’ve now commented on Gartner’s 2010 Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant as well.
At intervals of a little over a year, Gartner Group publishes a Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant. Gartner’s 2009 data warehouse DBMS Magic Quadrant — actually, January 2010 — is now out.* For many reasons, including those I noted in my comments on Gartner’s 2008 Data Warehouse DBMS Magic Quadrant, the Gartner quadrant pictures are a bad use of good research. Rather than rehash that this year, I’ll merely call out some points in the surrounding commentary that I find interesting or just plain strange. Read more
This and that
I have various subjects backed up that I don’t really want to write about at traditional blog-post length. Here are a few of them. Read more
Oracle lifts the cloud hanging over MySQL storage engine vendors
Oracle has put out a press release promising to play nicely with MySQL if its Sun takeover is approved. The parts in italics below are quotes. My comments are in plain text.
1. Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs. Oracle shall maintain and periodically enhance MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture to allow users the flexibility to choose from a portfolio of native and third party supplied storage engines.
MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture shall mean MySQL’s current practice of using, publicly-available, documented application programming interfaces to allow storage engine vendors to “plug” into the MySQL database server. Documentation shall be consistent with the documentation currently provided by Sun.
Well, duh.
2. Non-assertion. As copyright holder, Oracle will change Sun’s current policy and shall not assert or threaten to assert against anyone that a third party vendor’s implementations of storage engines must be released under the GPL because they have implemented the application programming interfaces available as part of MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.
A commercial license will not be required by Oracle from third party storage engine vendors in order to implement the application programming interfaces available as part of MySQL’s Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture.
Oracle shall reproduce this commitment in contractual commitments to storage vendors who at present have a commercial license with Sun.
This is the biggie, lifting a major cloud from the MySQL storage engine business. It sounds like the third of four options I suggested as to how Oracle could legitimately earn antitrust approval of its MySQL takeover. Sure, Infobright, Kickfire, et al. already had what they saw as adequate safeguards or contingency plans vs. Oracle skullduggery. It’s still big even so.
(Quoted out of order.) The geographic scope of these commitments shall be worldwide and these commitments shall continue until the fifth anniversary of the closing of the transaction.
Not a disaster, but with respect to at least point #2 there should be no time limit whatsoever. I’d like to see the EC require that change as a further Oracle concession. Read more
| Categories: MySQL, Open source, Oracle, Pricing | 17 Comments |
Boston Big Data Summit keynote outline
Last month, Bob Zurek asked me to give a talk on “Big Data”, where “big” is anything from a few terabytes on up, then moderate a panel on cloud computing. We agreed that I could talk just from notes, without slides. So, since I have them typed up, I’m posting them below.
Calpont’s InfiniDB
Since its inception, Calpont has gone through multiple management teams, strategies, and investor groups. What it hadn’t done, ever, is actually shipped a product. Last week, however, Calpont introduced a free/open source DBMS, InfiniDB, with technical details somewhat reminiscent of what Calpont was promising last April. Highlights include:
- Like Infobright, Calpont’s InfiniDB is a columnar DBMS consisting of a MySQL front end and a columnar storage engine.
- Community edition InfiniDB runs on a single server.
- One of commercial/enterprise edition InfiniDB’s main claims to fame will be MPP support.
- There’s no announced time frame for commercial edition InfiniDB.
- InfiniDB’s current compression story is dictionary/token only, with decompression occurring before joins are executed. Improvement is a roadmap item.
- Indeed, InfiniDB has many roadmap items, a few of which can be found here. Also, a great overview of InfiniDB’s current state and roadmap can be found in this MySQL Performance Blog thread. (And follow the links there to find performance discussions of other free analytic DBMS.)
- One thing InfiniDB already has that is still a roadmap item for Infobright is the ability to run a query across multiple cores at once.
- One thing free InfiniDB has that Infobright only offers in its Enterprise Edition is ACID-compliant Insert/Update/Delete. (Note: I wish people would stop saying that Infobright Enterprise Edition isn’t ACID-compliant, since that point was cleared up a while ago.)
- InfiniDB has no indexes or materialized views.
- However, InfiniDB’s retrieval is expedited by something called “Extents,” which sounds a lot like Netezza’s zone maps.
Being on vacation, I’ll stop there for now. (If it weren’t for Tropical Storm/ depression Ida, I might not even be posting this much until I get back.)