Mid-range
Analysis of database management systems optimized for general-purpose or transactional use, but not the most demanding high-end transactional applications. Related subjects include:
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.
EnterpriseDB’s Oracle clone — fact or fiction?
PostgreSQL-based EnterpriseDB is attracting a bit of attention. Philip Howard, as he does of most products, takes a favorable view. Seth Grimes regards the company as dirty, rotten liars. The company suggests that Everquest gameplay* runs on an RDBMS. I find this inherently implausible, and hence am starting out with a skeptical view of the company’s marketing messages.
*As in character movement. The idea that character inventory is stored in an RDBMS I find vastly more credible. Ditto other less volatile aspects of character state.
Read more
| Categories: ANTs Software, Emulation, transparency, portability, EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus, Games and virtual worlds, Mid-range, OLTP, Open source, Oracle, PostgreSQL | 4 Comments |
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 |
Solid/MySQL fit and positioning
I felt like writing a lot about the great potential fit between MySQL and Solid over the weekend, but Solid didn’t want me to do so. Now, however, I’m not in the mood, so I’ll just say that in OLTP, Solid’s technology is strong where MySQL’s is weak, and vice-versa. E.g., Solid is so proud of its zero-administration capabilities that, without MySQL, it doesn’t have much in the way of admin tools at all. Conversely, I think that many of those websites that crash all the time with MySQL errors would crash less with the Solid engine underneath. (Solid happens to be proud of its BLOB-handling capability, efficiency-wise.)
Neither outfit is good in data warehousing, or in text search, image search, etc. (Solid slings big files around, but it doesn’t peer closely inside them). But for OLTP of tabular or dumb media data, this looks like a great fit.
Whether anybody will care, however, is a different matter.
Lisa Vaas of eWeek offers a survey of the many MySQL engine options.
EDIT: Another Lisa Vaas article makes it clear that MySQL is planning to compete in data warehousing/OLAP as well.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, solidDB | 4 Comments |
More on Solid and MySQL?
In a stunningly self-defeating move, my friends at Solid have decided that anything about their already-leaked possible cooperation with MySQL is embargoed.
Indeed, they’ve emphasized to me multiple times that they do not wish me to write about it.
I shall honor their wishes. I hope they are pleased with the sophistication and insight of the coverage they receive from other sources.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, solidDB | 3 Comments |
MySQL gets the Solid engine
Solid and MySQL have struck a deal (and for some odd reason I had to find out about it from Slashdot and then here rather than from one one the companies). Apparently Solid will open source a version of its storage engine, to be used with the MySQL front-end.
Solid’s core technology is a lightweight, zero-administration OLTP RDBMS. And they really mean “zero-administration,” because as they like to point out, a typical deployment is embedded in a piece of telecom equipment that doesn’t even have a keyboard. Now, that doesn’t really mean the Solid engine would still be zero-administration in other applications, but sure aren’t talking about something as prickly as, say, Oracle.
That said, Solid’s technology has its limitations. It isn’t historically designed for the query load (volume or mix) of, say, an SAP installation. It certainly doesn’t have much in the way of data warehousing functionality. And it doesn’t have much in the way of administration tools itself (although presumably MySQL will fill that gap).
One very important aspect of the Solid technology is its hybrid memory-centric design. Much more on that soon. My white paper on memory-centric data management is finally close to publication, with Solid as a co-sponsor. At some point I’ll even do a webinar for them associated with the paper.
I don’t know whether that’s part of the MySQL relationship — it would be very cool if it were.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, Mid-range, MySQL, OLTP, Open source, solidDB | 2 Comments |
DB2 Express-C
IBM announced the freeware version of DB2 today. I’ll post links to the details later, but I want to highlight a couple of interesting implications:
1. They define the cutoff between the free and paid version not by how big a database you can manage on disk, but rather by how much RAM the software can address. This supports my thesis that effective use of RAM is crucial to DBMS performance, and is corollary — specially optimized memory-centric data management products deserve a place in most large enterprises’ product portfolios.
2. Having a free version of DB2 lets one play with whatever features DB2 may have that simply aren’t available in other DBMS, to see if they’re worth using. And the most significant such feature, in my opinion, is native XML storage. Whatever else this product does or doesn’t accomplish, it may serve to speed adoption of IBM’s native XML server technology.