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2007-09-10 21:03:08
Eric Lai
September 06, 2007 (Computerworld) As a researcher at the University of
California, Berkeley, in the early 1970s, Michael Stonebraker co-created the
Ingres and Postgres technology that underlies many leading relational databases
today: Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server, Sybase Inc.'s Adaptive Server Enterprise,
Ingres Corp.'s eponymous product, IBM's Informix, and others.
But Stonebraker now argues that relational databases, also known as RDBMSes,
are "long in the tooth" and "should be considered legacy technology."
In an entry Tuesday at a new blog, The Database Column, Stonebraker also argued
that today's relational databases lag badly in performance behind a new wave of
databases that flip database tables 90 degrees.
Column-oriented databases -- such as the one built by Stonebraker's latest
start-up, Andover, Mass.-based Vertica Systems Inc. -- store data vertically in
table columns rather than in successive rows.
By putting similar data together, column-oriented databases minimize the time
to read the disk, which can add up when executing large-scale calculations such
as those typically done in a data warehouse.
Column databases "will take over the warehouse market over time, completely
displacing row stores," Stonebraker wrote. "Since many warehouse users are in
considerable pain (can't load in the available load window, can't support
ad-hoc queries, can't get better performance without a "fork-lift" upgrade), I
expect this transition to column stores will occur fairly quickly."
Column-oriented database systems are not new. Sybase has successfully sold its
column-based IQ database for years as a high-performance business intelligence
solution.
More recently BigTable, the database that Google Inc. built to handle a number
of its applications, stores data in columns.
But they remain a niche offering. In comparison, the leading players in the
mainstream database market, which is estimated at $15 billion annually
worldwide, all rely on systems using row-based tables.
Organizing data by rows does have its advantages. Writing data to disk in row
format is faster than doing so by columns. That is key for high-transaction
database applications where data is constantly being read and written to the
database, though markedly less important for data warehouses, where data is
typically written just once and accessed many times after that.
Stonebraker, who is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Vertica,
claims that his latest start-up has other performance-boosting features, such
as very aggressive data compression and a query executor that "runs against
compressed data."
As a result, "Vertica beats all row stores on the planet -- typically by a
factor of 50," he wrote. "The only engines that come closer are other column
stores, which Vertica typically beats by around a factor of 10."
Stonebraker says other firms similar to Vertica can do just as well.
"In every major application area I can think of, it is possible to build a SQL
DBMS engine with vertical market-specific internals that outperforms the 'one
size fits all' engines by a factor of 50 or so," he wrote.
Other contributors to the Database Column blog include Don Haderle, a retired
IBM fellow who is considered the "father" of its DB2 database, as well as Jerry
Held, who helped create Tandem Computer's NonStop database.