EnterpriseDB Open Sources GridSQL

I wrote about GridSQL and EnterpriseDB a while back. EnterpriseDB bought GridSQL (from Mason who now works at EnterpriseDB) and has been working to improve it. Yesterday, they announced that they are open sourcing it.

GridSQL is really for data warehousing but can be applied to some OLTP/reporting combination databases. What it does is take a query and spread it out to run in parallel against a set of cheap PCs. There is a controller machine, called a coordinator, that keeps track of what is running and where.

Because there is a central point of failure (the coordinator), it is not a high availability solution. But, also because of the coordinator, you can hot swap, add or remove nodes while users are accessing the data. Very cool technology.

LewisC

gridsql enterprisedb

RAC on Open Source: EntepriseDB GridSQL

This is just too cool. Today, EnterpriseDB announced at LinuxWorld that they are offering GridSQL, a data warehouse and OLAP clustering solution. According to the doc, the EnterpriseDB page for GridSQL, the tool offers:

• Quickly and easily create, maintain, and access very large databases for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing applications

• Offload reporting from expensive hardware platforms onto an inexpensive grid of commodity hardware, creating significant savings

• Run reporting and other applications with very large datasets, improving organizational decision-making

• Improve organizational productivity and agility by enabling quick access to large amounts of informationThis is supposed to be a true, shared nothing approach to clustering. I, obviously, haven't had the chance to play with it yet but I will.

This is a scale out package for large databases. So I am guessing that you would be able to partition data across multiple machines but that is a total guess on my part. It may be just a CPU boost instead. I need to do some more research.

According to the documentation, GridSQL includes parallel query where EnterpriseDB (the database) decides how to spread the query across all databases in the grid. It does include a parallel query optimizer.

This i s an incredible step for EnterpriseDB. Check out the press release. I wonder how long it will be before they release GridSQL for PostgreSQL? RAC on open source? Free RAC? Interesting.

LewisC

oracle enterprisedb rac real application clusters gridsql parallel

EnterpriseDB Finalist in Two Categories at LinuxWorld

EnterpriseDB got the finalist nod for Best Database Solution, for the third year, and for GridSQL For EnterpriseDB. This is the first I have heard of GridSQL and I am looking forward to more info.

All it says in the announcement is:

GridSQL for EnterpriseDB Advanced Server is a new product that will be announced at LinuxWorld on Aug. 7, 2007.

About all I can think is that it is something like pgCluster which is a multi-master, bi-directional replication tool for PostgreSQL. I have a hard believing that's what it because 1) they already have a replication tool and 2) the naming would be incredibly unfortunate.

I say option 2 because when most people hear grid associated with "an Oracle compatible database", they think of Oracle RAC and/or Grid (which most people erroneously think is the same thing but that's a different blog).

So now I wait with baited breath. I wish I had gotten a head's up at least.

oracle enterprisedb gridsql linux world award pgcluster