Postgres has religion

Keeping up with new developments is turning into a full time job. I can live with that. Here is a specific test. He uses a newish Fusion-io PCIe card drive. This kind of drive is not architecturally like a STEC or Texas Memory Systems subsystem, or even a SATA drive like the Intels. Still, superb results.

MySql (in part) gets the religion

I am no fan of MySql, if only because it has been driven by application coders who view databases not as relational algebra engines but as file dumps with a SQL interface; however, when I run across news that supports the thrust of this endeavor, I accept. The following is a quote from Andy Oram on the O'Reilly site:

Although there's no simple to characterize the many tweaks and additions, I detect two major sources of change:

* Taking advantage of the larger memory (including Solid State Drive (SSD)/Flash memory starting to appear on servers).
* Taking advantage of multicores, especially by making locks more granular.

He's talking about the fork, or not, of MySql post Oracle gobble. The irony, I suspect, is that the SSD/multi-core machine is fully suited to 5NF datastores, while not so much to the flat-file paradigm beloved of MySql application KiddieKoders. May be they'll figure out that normalized datastores will get better advantage from such machines. There is hope.

IBM does SSD

There is more news on the SSD front. STEC is a smallish (relative to Intel, Texas Memory Systems is private) flash SSD manufacturer. I just wish I'd known about them a few months ago; the stock has tripled in the last few months. Oh well.

More to the point: they manufacture flash based Tier 0 SSD subsystems, and have just announced deals with IBM and Hitachi (which just announced its worst year ever, eek) to run fiber channel storage.

So, take that all you silly doubting Thomases. The RDBMS is back, taking names, and kicking ass.

To review, IBM bought up solidDB a few years back, now has validated SSD. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. It's going to be glorious ride.

Wither DB2?

Where is DB2 going? IBM spent time trying to get Sun/MySql, all the while dallying with PostgreSQL with whom it now seems to have consummated marriage. At the same time, it is pushing MySql. MySql has been available on the iSeries for a few years, and I see a growing (although not a tidal wave) number of listing by IBM for MySql installers/maintenance. It, sort of, doesn't compute.

The enterpriseDB (PostgreSQL) mashup certainly sounds like the way to get MVCC support without having to actually write it, or admit that it was necessary. It is well known that MVCC has advantages for OLTP applications over locker databases. This is the technical reason Oracle (and PostgreSQL) hold such a lead; we'll see how the annual Gartner report goes. SQLServer got "snapshot" isolation in 2005 for just that reason. IBM pulled an IMS rabbit out of its hat instead. Gad.

Looking at the job boards, as I am these days, it is disheartening to see so little DB2/LUW in demand. Fact is, it really is the best locker out there. Its configuration is at least as good as Oracle. There are those in the DB2 community (I won't name names) who feel that IBM is at fault. I concur.

The "free" LUW DB2 is a pain to use. It needn't be; on the other hand, Oracle doesn't make the current version available in its free/community install.

It seems that IBM continues to push the mainframe DB2 installs, which act more like MySql as simple sql parsers fronting the filesystem than as RDBMS, as the source of its market share and revenue. I would dearly love to see true figures on the adoption of DB2 on z/OS. How much is just VSAM file dumps for antique COBOL code versus new or refactored relational datastores for java/ruby/python/etc.?

The situation with LUW is such a pathetic waste. It is so much better than its rivals.