Infobright Blog

As a software engineer myself, I have a strong background working with DBMS systems like SQL Server and MySQL. Not just from building web applications, but also from a n-Tier application architecture approach. I tend to use standard approaches to architecture and modeling, so like any engineer, I have come to test the limits and drawbacks of SQL Server and other OLTP databases. Building out the common business, data and presentation layers of any application tends to meet the many challenges of keeping those layers separate and autonomous.

I have worked in many different industries ranging from healthcare and education to wholesale and retail, and one of the biggest problems that I always seem to encounter in my projects is ad-hoc querying in the reporting modules. How do you keep the database tuned for queries when you do not know what the query will be? SQL Server certainly has caching and even the ability to cache the actual query and the data separately, but when the CFO wants to look at common trends against the corporate database for spending with daily, weekly and monthly increments for sales engineers in the northeast regions......

You get the picture. Why a different approach?

Because like any other DBMS, the drawbacks of traditional OLTP systems are that they are not built around an analytical approach. They do not focus on the statistical data that is necessary for reporting. I am a strong supporter of data analytics and feel that if your organization is not using them, then you are not competing at the level you can be. Infobright solves this problem with an approach that is based on performance, scalability and lowering overall costs.

In the next few months, I plan to learn the underlying architecture of Infobright and discover new ways of integrating Infobright into suitable analytic applications. I will do in-depth analysis of Use Cases and I look forward to learning how organizations are using Infobright within their infrastructure. Please feel free to contact me at craig.trombly @ infobright.com with your experiences and use cases.