Brian Aker On the Future of Databases 175
blackbearnh recommends
an interview with MySQL Director of Technology Brian Aker that O'Reilly Media is running. Aker talks about the merger of MySQL with Sun, the challenges of designing databases for a SOA world, and what the next decade will bring as far as changes to traditional database architecture. Audio is also available. From the interview: "I think there's two things right now that are pushing the changes... The first thing that's going to push the basic old OLCP transactional database world, which... really hasn't [changed] in some time now — is really a change in the number of cores and the move to solid state disks because a lot of the... concept around database is the idea that you don't have access to enough memory. Your disk is slow, can't do random reads very well, and you maybe have one, maybe eight processors but... you look at some of the upper-end hardware and the mini-core stuff,... and you're almost looking at kind of an array of processing that you're doing; you've got access to so many processors. And well the whole story of trying to optimize... around the problem of random I/O being expensive, well that's not that big of a deal when you actually have solid state disks. So that's one whole area I think that will... cause a rethinking in... the standard Jim Gray relational database design."
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
BigTable, HBase and SimpleDB are the future (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can I ask a stupid question... (Score:4, Informative)
MySQL only does table locks, which are much simpler and much faster for light workloads, but as I'm sure you can imagine when you have many CPUs trying to update the table at once in the end each thread has to wait their turn to grab the lock and perform their updates sequentially.
In SQL Server, Oracle, or any other "enterprisey" db multiple threads can update the same table at exactly the same time, as long as its not the same row.
Stuff like this is exactly why people who use MS-SQL and oracle look down their nose at people who use MySQL and claim it is capable of playing with the big boys.
Once again, despite what MySQL are saying there is nothing innovative here. All this stuff has existed in the mainstream database engines for many, many years and they are still playing catchup.
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
Come on, he's talking about the future of databases. He was just trying to set the mood by doing his best Kirk impression.
Re:Too small (Score:2, Informative)
I'm sure he'll feel lots worse. While Gates gets hounded for something he never said, at least he has mountains and mountains of cash to console him.
Re:Can I ask a stupid question... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can I ask a stupid question... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Admittedly.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Admittedly.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This IS news! (Score:3, Informative)
Relational algebra has nothing to do with random IO however building a relational database system has everything to do with random IO because it is by and large the worst bottleneck in the system. The best performing RDBMSs are the ones completely designed around avoiding random IO. That's why TFA says a new RDBMS could be created from scratch and blow the existing players out of the water in the new SSD world.
Re:Dear Slashot (Score:3, Informative)
Additionally, I'd argue that comparing a MyISAM table to SQL Server (or any other transactional, ACID-compliant RDBMS) is not a fair comparison. If all you care about is speed, then you can get even more if you go with an embedded database like Firebird or SQLite. Or try a flat file. Those are terrifically fast if you do them right. Why do you think file systems are so much more efficient than RDBMS's?
Honestly, there are better ways to optimize most databases which don't involve sacrificing data integrity to do so. Examine your indices and views. Maybe your DB isn't normalized properly. IMO, sacrificing OLTP integrity to satisfy OLAP speed is like taking supports from the first floor to finish the roof.
Re:Admittedly.... (Score:2, Informative)
Cores, cpus, nodes, .. (Score:4, Informative)