McObject
McObject and its eXtremeDB in-memory database management system. Related subjects include:
Notes on indexes and index-like structures
Indexes are central to database management.
- My first-ever stock analyst report, in 1982, correctly predicted that index-based DBMS would supplant linked-list ones …
- … and to this day, if one wants to retrieve a small fraction of a database, indexes are generally the most efficient way to go.
- Recently, I’ve had numerous conversations in which indexing strategies played a central role.
Perhaps it’s time for a round-up post on indexing. 🙂
1. First, let’s review some basics. Classically:
- An index is a DBMS data structure that you probe to discover where to find the data you really want.
- Indexes make data retrieval much more selective and hence faster.
- While indexes make queries cheaper, they make writes more expensive — because when you write data, you need to update your index as well.
- Indexes also induce costs in database size and administrative efforts. (Manual index management is often the biggest hurdle for “zero-DBA” RDBMS installations.)
2. Further: Read more
| Categories: Data warehousing, Database compression, GIS and geospatial, Google, MapReduce, McObject, MemSQL, MySQL, ScaleDB, solidDB, Sybase, Text, Tokutek and TokuDB | 18 Comments |
Comments on the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems
The 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems is out. “Operational” seems to be Gartner’s term for what I call short-request, in each case the point being that OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) is a dubious term when systems omit strict consistency, and when even strictly consistent systems may lack full transactional semantics. As is usually the case with Gartner Magic Quadrants:
- I admire the raw research.
- The opinions contained are generally reasonable (especially since Merv Adrian joined the Gartner team).
- Some of the details are questionable.
- There’s generally an excessive focus on Gartner’s perception of vendors’ business skills, and on vendors’ willingness to parrot all the buzzphrases Gartner wants to hear.
- The trends Gartner highlights are similar to those I see, although our emphasis may be different, and they may leave some important ones out. (Big omission — support for lightweight analytics integrated into operational applications, one of the more genuine forms of real-time analytics.)
Anyhow: Read more
McObject and eXtremeDB
I talked with McObject yesterday. McObject has two product lines, both of which are something like in-memory DBMS — eXtremeDB, which is the main one, and Perst. McObject has been around since at least 2003, probably has no venture capital, and probably has a very low double-digit number of employees.*
*I could be wrong in those guesses; as small companies go, McObject is unusually prone to secrecy games.
As best I understand:
- eXtremeDB is something like an in-memory object-oriented DBMS, designed to be embeddable.
- However, much as with Objectivity and other old-school OODBMS, eXtremeDB winds up being more of a toolkit with which to build DBMS than a full DBMS.
- eXtremeDB has a few indexing schemes. The main one is good old B-trees. One customer wanted Patricia tries, so they’re in there. (Perhaps not coincidentally, solidDB relies on Patricia tries.) At least one wanted R-trees, so they’re in there too.
- eXtremeDB has long had the option of persistent logs.
- eXtremeDB newly has a hybrid memory-centric option, in which you can have more data in the database than fits into RAM.
- eXtremeDB newly has multi-master two-phase-commit clustering.
My guess three years ago that eXtremeDB might emerge as an alternative to solidDB seems to have been borne out. McObject CEO Steve Graves says that the core of McObject’s business is OEMs, in sectors such as telecom equipment and defense/aerospace. That’s exactly solidDB’s traditional market, except that solidDB got acquired by IBM and deemphasized it.
I’ve said before that if I were starting a SaaS effort — and it wasn’t just focused on analytics — I’d look at using a memory-centric OODBMS. Perhaps eXtremeDB is worth looking at in such scenarios.
| Categories: In-memory DBMS, McObject, Memory-centric data management, Object, Objectivity and Infinite Graph, solidDB, Telecommunications | 11 Comments |
Ordinary OLTP DBMS vs. memory-centric processing
A correspondent from China wrote in to ask about products that matched the following application scenario: Read more
| Categories: In-memory DBMS, McObject, Memory-centric data management, OLTP, Oracle TimesTen, solidDB | 7 Comments |
Detailed analysis of Perst and other in-memory object-oriented DBMS
Dan Weinreb — inspired by but not linking to my recent short post on McObject’s object-oriented in-memory DBMS Perst — has posted a detailed discussion of Perst on his own blog. For context, he compares it briefly to analogous products, most especially Progress’s — which used to be ObjectStore, of which Dan was the chief architect.
This was based on documentation and general sleuthing (Dan figured out who McObject got Perst from), rather than hands-on experience, so performance figures and the like aren’t validated. Still, if you’re interested in such technology, it’s a fascinating post.
| Categories: In-memory DBMS, McObject, Memory-centric data management, Object | Leave a Comment |
Open source in-memory DBMS
I’ve gotten email about two different open source in-memory DBMS products/projects. I don’t know much about either, but in case you care, here are some pointers to more info.
First, the McObject guys — who also sell a relational in-memory product — have an object-oriented, apparently Java-centric product called Perst. They’ve sent over various press releases about same, the details of which didn’t make much of an impression on me. (Upon review, I see that one of the main improvements they cite in Perst 3.0 is that they added 38 pages of documentation.)
Second, I just got email about something called CSQL Cache. You can read more about CSQL Cache here, if you’re willing to navigate some fractured English. CSQL’s SourceForge page is here. My impression is that CSQL Cache is an in-memory DBMS focused on, you guessed it, caching. It definitely seems to talk SQL, but possibly its native data model is of some other kind (there are references both to “file-based” and “network”.)
| Categories: Cache, DBMS product categories, In-memory DBMS, McObject, Memory-centric data management, Object, OLTP, Open source | 5 Comments |
McObject eXtremeDB — a solidDB alternative
McObject — vendor of memory-centric DBMS eXtremeDB — is a tiny, tiny company, without a development team of the size one would think needed to turn out one or more highly-reliable DBMS. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about whether it’s a serious alternative to solidDB for embedded DBMS, e.g. in telecom equipment. However:
- IBM’s acquisition of Solid seems to suggest a focus on DB2 caching rather than the embedded market
- McObject actually has built up something of a customer list, as per the boilerplate on any of its press releases.
And they do seem to have some nice features, including Patricia tries (like solidDB), R-trees (for geospatial), and some kind of hybrid disk-centric/memory-centric operation.