"New Breed" Database Extensibility

tom@fulltablescan.com (Tom) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:11:00 -0400

At present, I can think of at least 5 "new breed" database vendors that you allow you to extend their SQL language in some form or another:

Netezza
ParAccel
Kognitio
Greenplum (I think)
DATAllegro/Microsoft

Of course, the old guard is well-represented in this category as well - Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Teradata, etc. all allow language extension via custom functions, plug-ins, etc.

I don't know enough about it yet to know, but I think that Greenplum and AsterData might also belong on this list due to their support for Map/Reduce.

It wasn't all that long ago (3 or 4 years) that most of these vendors didn't even support the full SQL standard, never mind compiled-code extensions to their SQL language. Oh, the possibilities.

Kognitio Lands Semi-interesting Client

tom@fulltablescan.com (Tom) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:19:08 -0400

Kognitio announced yesterday that the National Center for Genome Resources has "deployed Kognitio's WX2 purpose-built database". I find this semi-interesting for two reasons:

• "Deployed" is very different than "selected"
• I'm a bit tired of hearing about "enterprises" who have "selected" a particular MPP database for this that or another. This isn't really Earth-shattering news either, but at least it's a bit different.

Now, I don't know the first thing about genome research, but I do know that at least one MPP vendor has added functionality specifically for genome research clients. As such I wondered whether Kognitio had done the same to close the NCGR deal. When asked, however, the folks at Kognitio said that "NCGR [is] using pure SQL as they migrate over". I'm not sure that means that NCGR is doing the same old boring SQL stuff as everybody else or that MPP databases have finally matured to the point that you can write the complex (and often ugly) SQL queries that mature OLTP systems have been supporting for years. My guess is that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Like I said... semi-interesting.

Full Table Scan - Kognitio

"New Breed" Database Extensibility

Kognitio Lands Semi-interesting Client