NoSQL overview
My NoSQL article is finally posted; I hope it lives up to all the foreshadowing. It is being run online at Intelligent Enterprise/Information Week, as per the link above, where Doug Henschen edited it...
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When it’s still best to use a relational DBMS
There are plenty of viable alternatives to relational database management systems. For short-request processing, both document stores and fully object-oriented DBMS can make sense. Text search engines...
View ArticleEight kinds of analytic database (Part 1)
Analytic data management technology has blossomed, leading to many questions along the lines of “So which products should I use for which category of problem?” The old EDW/data mart dichotomy is...
View ArticleEight kinds of analytic database (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this two-part series, I outlined four variants on the traditional enterprise data warehouse/data mart dichotomy, and suggested what kinds of DBMS products you might use for each. In Part 2...
View ArticleSoundbites: the Facebook/MySQL/NoSQL/VoltDB/Stonebraker flap, continued
As a follow-up to the latest Stonebraker kerfuffle, Derrick Harris asked me a bunch of smart followup questions. My responses and afterthoughts include: Facebook et al. are in effect Software as a...
View ArticleJuggling analytic databases
I’d like to survey a few related ideas: Enterprises should each have a variety of different analytic data stores. Vendors — especially but not only IBM and Teradata — are acknowledging and marketing...
View ArticleMany kinds of memory-centric data management
I’m frequently asked to generalize in some way about in-memory or memory-centric data management. I can start: The desire for human real-time interactive response naturally leads to keeping data in...
View ArticleWorkday update
In August 2010, I wrote about Workday’s interesting technical architecture, highlights of which included: Lots of small Java objects in memory. A very simple MySQL backing store (append-only, <10...
View ArticleDatabase diversity revisited
From time to time, I try to step back and build a little taxonomy for the variety in database technology. One effort was 4 1/2 years ago, in a pre-planned exchange with Mike Stonebraker (his side,...
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Integrated internet system design
What are the central challenges in internet system design? We probably all have similar lists, comprising issues such as scale, scale-out, throughput, availability, security, programming ease, UI, or...
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One database to rule them all?
Perhaps the single toughest question in all database technology is: Which different purposes can a single data store serve well? — or to phrase it more technically — Which different usage patterns can...
View ArticleLayering of database technology & DBMS with multiple DMLs
Two subjects in one post, because they were too hard to separate from each other Any sufficiently complex software is developed in modules and subsystems. DBMS are no exception; the core trinity of...
View ArticleDBMS2 revisited
The name of this blog comes from an August, 2005 column. 8 1/2 years later, that analysis holds up pretty well. Indeed, I’d keep the first two precepts exactly as I proposed back then: Task-appropriate...
View ArticleUsing multiple data stores
I’m commonly asked to assess vendor claims of the kind: “Our system lets you do multiple kinds of processing against one database.” “Otherwise you’d need two or more data managers to get the job done,...
View ArticleData models
7-10 years ago, I repeatedly argued the viewpoints: Relational DBMS were the right choice in most cases. Multiple kinds of relational DBMS were needed, optimized for different kinds of use case. There...
View ArticleNotes on HBase
I talked with a couple of Cloudera folks about HBase last week. Let me frame things by saying: The closest thing to an HBase company, ala MongoDB/MongoDB or DataStax/Cassandra, is Cloudera. Cloudera...
View ArticleMulti-model database managers
I’d say: Multi-model database management has been around for decades. Marketers who say otherwise are being ridiculous. Thus, “multi-model”-centric marketing is the last refuge of the incompetent....
View ArticleNotes on packaged applications (including SaaS)
1. The rise of SAP (and later Siebel Systems) was greatly helped by Anderson Consulting, even before it was split off from the accounting firm and renamed as Accenture. My main contact in that group...
View ArticleDifferentiation in data management
In the previous post I broke product differentiation into 6-8 overlapping categories, which may be abbreviated as: Scope Accuracy (Other) trustworthiness Speed User experience Cost and sometimes also...
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Readings in Database Systems
Mike Stonebraker and Larry Ellison have numerous things in common. If nothing else: They’re both titanic figures in the database industry. They both gave me testimonials on the home page of my business...
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