Microsoft and SQL*Server
Microsoft’s efforts in the database management, analytics, and data connectivity markets. Related subjects include:
- DATAllegro, which is being bought by Microsoft
- (in Text Technologies) Microsoft in the search, online media, and social software markets
- (in The Monash Report) Strategic issues for Microsoft, and Microsoft Office
- (in Software Memories) Historical notes on Microsoft
Pervasive Summit PSQL v10
Pervasive Software has a long history – 25 years, in fact, as they’re emphasizing in some current marketing. Ownership and company name have changed a few times, as the company went from being an independent startup to being owned by Novell to being independent again. The original product, and still the cash cow, was a linked-list DBMS called Btrieve, eventually renamed Pervasive PSQL as it gained more and more relational functionality.
Pervasive Summit PSQL v10 has just been rolled out, and I wrote a nice little white paper to commemorate the event, describing some of the main advances over v9, primarily for the benefit of current Pervasive PSQL developers. In one major advance, Pervasive made the SQL functionality much stronger. In particular, you now can have a regular SQL data dictionary, so that the database can be used for other purposes – BI, additional apps, whatever. Apparently, that wasn’t possible before, although it had been possible in yet earlier releases. Pervasive also added view-based security permissions, which is obviously a Very Good Thing.
There also are some big performance boosts. Read more
Native XML engine short list
I’ve been implying that the short list for native XML database engine vendors should be MarkLogic, IBM, and maybe Microsoft, on the theory that Progress and Intersystems tried the market and pulled back. Well, add Intersystems to the list, and not necessarily in last place. They’ve long had a very fast nonrelational engine in Cache’. Perhaps building Ensemble on it has induced them to sharpen up the XML capabilities again.
Anyhow, while I’m not at liberty to explain more of my reasoning (i.e., to disclose my evidence) — Cache’ should be taken seriously as an XML DBMS alternative … even if I never can seem to get a proper DBMS briefing from them (which is far from entirely being their fault).
| Categories: IBM and DB2, Intersystems and Cache', MarkLogic, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Progress, Apama, and DataDirect, Structured documents | 1 Comment |
The database technology of Guild Wars
I have the enviable task of researching online game and virtual world technology. My first interview, quite naturally, was with the lead developers of a game I actually play – Guild Wars. The overview is in another post; that may provide context for this one, which focuses on the database technology. (I also did a short post just on the implications for Guild Wars players.) It also has a brief description of what Guild Wars is – namely, a MMORPG (Massively MultiPlayer Role-Playing Game) with the unusual feature that most of the game world is instanced rather than utterly shared.
First, some scope. ArenaNet (Guild Wars’ developer, now a subsidiary of NCsoft) runs Microsoft SQL Server, mainly Enterprise Edition, having just switched to 2005 4 months ago. They run 1500-2500 transactions/second all day, spiking up to 5000 in their busiest periods. They have no full-time DBA, and when the developers started this project they didn’t know SQL. They’ve only had one major SQL Server failure in the 2+ years the game has been running, and that was (like most of their bugs) a network driver problem more than an issue with the core system.
As for what’s going on — there are a few different kinds of database things that happen in an instanced MMORPG. Read more
Naming the DBMS disruptors
Edit: This post has largely been superseded by this more recent one defining mid-range relational DBMS.
I find myself defining a new product category – midrange OLTP/multipurpose DBMS. (Or just midrange DBMS for brevity.) Nothing earthshaking here; I’m simply referring to those products that: Read more
Why Oracle and Microsoft will lose in VLDB data warehousing
I haven’t been as clear as I could have been in explaining why I think MPP/shared-nothing beats SMP/shared-everything. The answer is in a short white paper, currently bottlenecked at the sponsor’s end of the process. Here’s an excerpt from the latest draft:
There are two ways to make more powerful computers:
1. Use more powerful parts – processors, disk drives, etc.
2. Just use more parts of the same power.
Of the two, the more-parts strategy much more cost-effective. Smaller* parts are much more economical, since the bigger the part, the harder and more costly it is to avoid defects, in manufacturing and initial design alike. Consequently, all high-end computers rely on some kind of parallel processing.
*As measured in terms of capacity, transistor count, etc., not physical size. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server, Netezza, Oracle, Parallelization, Teradata, Theory and architecture, Vertica Systems | 7 Comments |
How Hyperion will change Oracle
Oracle is evidently buying Hyperion Software. Much like Gaul, Hyperion can be divided into three parts:
- Budgeting and consolidation applications, descended from the original Hyperion and Pillar.
- Essbase, the definitive MOLAP engine, descended from Arbor Software.
- A business intelligence suite, descended from Brio.
The most important part is budgeting/planning, because it could help Oracle change the rules for application software. But Essbase could be just the nudge Oracle needs to finally renounce its one-server-fits-all dogma.
Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Microsoft and SQL*Server, MOLAP, Oracle | 16 Comments |
Opportunities for disruption in the OLTP database management market (deck-clearing post #2)
The standard Clayton Christensen “Innovator’s Dilemma” disruption narrative goes something like this:
- Market leaders have many advantages, including top technology.
- Followers come up with good technology too.
- The leaders stay ahead by making their products ever better and more complex.
- The followers sell into new or non-mainstream markets, at prices the leaders can’t match. So they dominate new markets.
- Old markets turn into low-margin commodity-fests.
- Old leaders are screwed.
And it’s really hard for market leaders to avert this sad fate, because the short- and intermediate-term margin hit would be too great.
I think the OLTP DBMS market is ripe for that kind of disruption – riper than commentators generally realize. Here are some key potential drivers:
Read more
OLTP database management system market – the consensus isn’t ALL wrong (deck-clearing post #1)
Most of what I’ve written lately about database management seems to have been focused on analytic technologies. But I have a lot to say on the OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) side too. So let’s start by clearing the decks. Here’s a list of some consensus views that I in essence agree with:
- Oracle is the top of the line, and has nothing wrong with it other than cost of ownership and the non-joys of doing business with Oracle Corporation.
- DB2/mainframe is a fine product, but only if you like IBM mainframes.
- DB2/open systems is another fine product, but it’s hard to think of reasons to use it over Oracle.
- Microsoft SQL Server has great cost of ownership if you’re a Windows (server) shop anyway, especially on the administrative side. It does most but not all of what Oracle does.
- Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise is a lot like SQL Server, but without the Windows dependence or the great Microsoft tools. If you have it installed or are Chinese, you should strongly consider using it, but otherwise there are better alternatives.
- Progress’ DBMS is great if you don’t need any of the features it’s missing. Administration, for example, is a super-low-cost breeze. But why use it unless you’re also using the Progress development tools?
- Intersystems’ Cache’ is another fine mid-range product that involves buying into the vendors’ whole tool set – all the more so because it isn’t relational.
- Small-footprint embedded DBMS, from vendors such as Sybase’s iAnywhere division or Solid Information Technologies, are off in their own little world. Mainly, that world is telecom, with a satellite in medical devices, although other kinds of networked equipment also sometimes use these products.
- IBM’s non-DB2 database management products – IMS, Informix, etc. – are fine things to stick with until you have to change. Ditto products from Software AG, Computer Associates, Cincom, etc.
- MySQL Version 4 is an OLTP joke, but it’s a joke many people share. (Hey — a lot of blogs, including mine, run on WordPress and MySQL 4.)
- Until Ingres is meaningfully marketed and sold outside its installed base, it’s not worth worrying about.
- PostgreSQL is more significant as the underpinning of other products — mainly EnterpriseDB in the OLTP space — than it is in its own right.
Leaving Microsoft with a laugh
Jim Allchin’s farewell blog post is a hoot. There’s even a bit of database stuff in it.
| Categories: Humor, Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |
Jim Gray missing at sea
While scattering his mother’s ashes, ironically. Let’s hope this isn’t as bad as it sounds, and that he comes home safely, soon.
Edit: As of Thursday morning, the news is bad.
| Categories: Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |