Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cimshop!davidm From: cimshop!davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: Info on database hardware Message-ID: Date: 31 May 90 17:43:10 GMT References: <3298@avocado4.UUCP> Sender: davidm@cimshop.UUCP Organization: Consilium Inc., Mountain View, California. Lines: 43 In-reply-to: palat@motcid.UUCP's message of 30 May 90 20:54:54 GMT In article <3298@avocado4.UUCP> palat@motcid.UUCP (Mohan Palat) writes: This is a request for information on database machines/hardware. Hmmm. Its been a while since I looked at the things to answer this question, so this might be a bit dated and probably not complete. 1. Are there any commercial database machines or database engines designed to handle very large databases in an oltp environment? The database machine/engine concept has blurred over the past couple of years. There are the systems by Teradata and Sharebase which are specialized computers for handling large relational databases (Teradata will go into the terabytes of information) with good performance in the OLTP environment (I believe Teradata is involved with the banking industry - a high OLTP environment). I believe Teradata recently acquired Sharebase, so there now seems to be one major vendor of database machines. Although Oracle hasn't done it themselves, a couple of VARs for Oracle have built accelerator systems for Oracle (Charles River Data) or special configurations for Oracle (Independence Technologies) for OLTP needs. I believe there have been other specialized boards (typically for the VAX computer) for improving the performance of software database systems. The founders of Sybase were originally from Sharebase (Dr. Epstein goes back to the Ingres project). As I understood it at the time, Sybase believed that developing specialized hardware for database management was a losing proposition for a small company. The small company would introduce its specialized hardware representing lots of R&D and expect to make due with it long enough to recoup its investment. However, typically a little after the introduction the big general purpose hardware vendors would introduce a new processor that allowed software relational systems to match the performance of the hardware engine with little or no investment in hardware. Sybase's approach, therefore, was to build a software database engine that could then be easily moved to new platforms when they become available. -- =================================================================== David Masterson Consilium, Inc. uunet!cimshop!davidm Mt. View, CA 94043 =================================================================== "If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"