Infobright Blog

Just returning from SIGMOD 2009 conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Nice town and a great opportunity to spend some time with like-minded data base enthusiasts, both from industry and academic.

Of course, there were the expected presentations on query optimization and other database advances. But here are some of the other highlights.

• Column Stores are all the rage. There were lots of presentations (including ours) and discussion on the subject. Nice to be part of the action so to speak.
• The keynote on Tuesday from SAP claimed that with column store technology (used in memory), we could merge OLTP and OLAP applications. Well, since I was around (actually worked with) when Bill Inmon and others defined the approach of separation of DW applications from OLTP applications, that later became recognized at the defacto design for DW, it would seem things are coming full circle. I don’t find this too surprising as I see the increasing power of the machines and further advances in database technology as prime enablers to improved ability to manage a truly mixed workload environment.
• Certainly not the point of the paper about Yahoo’s 10 PB, data warehouse; they stated that one of the design objectives of the environment was to spend no more than $200/TB on hardware infrastructure (disk and cpu). Well, that’s definitely food for thought. Both a fresh perspective and consideration that seems to be quickly overlooked by many analysts and vendors.
• And what would a database conference be without a comparison of Hadoop (Map/Reduce) to RDMS technology. Really folks, can’t we move on. Are these two technologies really in the same market space. Granted you can use Hadoop for some DW purposes, but let’s not confuse things. Doesn’t it just come down to two things, Hadoop is the only open source MPP/Shared nothing architecture (although IB doesn’t offer this, you really should check us out) and interface (the flexibility of a programmatic interface as compared to SQL). Interestingly enough, MS is enabling .NET applications to run in a cluster (taking care of the details of an MPP/Shared Nothing architecture). Well, at least the MS developer will have an alternative to learn Linux and Hadoop.
• Did they have to remind me of the 40 years of database history? All I can say is “Many thanks to those of you responsible for making IMS, IDMS and DL\1 obsolete!”
• SCM will overtake Flash technology (IBM’s prediction). So chips will start reducing RAM and using more SCM (Flash in the short term). All you application developers, start planning your use of extended memory, not that that should surprise you.
• And on a slightly related note, looking for a sexy demo for your DW application. Go to IBM’s Many Eyes, website http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/. That should get your business users drooling. Lots of economic stats too if that turns your crank. You can even analyze people’s tweets.

Well, that’s probably enough for now.