Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!amdahl!rtech!markd@rtech.UUCP
From: markd@rtech.UUCP (Mark P. Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: ORACLE REL 6, INGRES REL 6
Message-ID: <2882@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 9 May 89 23:14:49 GMT
References: <1588@bilpin.UUCP>
Sender: news@rtech.rtech.com
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems
Lines: 34

From article <1588@bilpin.UUCP>, by nick@bilpin.UUCP (Nick Price):
> 
> Here's another thought -- Many multi-processor Unix machines are
> appearing on the market now, both loosley coupled (NCR Tower 8XX),
> and tightly coupled (Sequent), to mention just two. In my experience
> RDBMS performance can become an issue in such an environment, 
> particularly where bottle-necks are introduced by a single server
> architecture.... 

INGRES Version 6 will address multiple processor support in two ways:  

The first release of the product will allow you to start up
multiple servers; for an N processor Symmetry, just start up
N (or some number proportionaly to N) servers.

Better yet, at the recent INGRES Users Association meeting,
Sequent and RTI announced a joint development project, PDQ 
which stands for Parallel Database Queries.  The first
part of this project will be to create a single server which
will run across multiple processors.  Thus while you still
have the option to run multiple servers, you need only start
up one to get full utilization of your multiprocessor
Symmetry.  

The other parts of the PDQ project will enable INGRES to run a single
user's database query using all the processors concurrently. 
The idea is to take long and complex decision-support type queries which
run on one single processor and (transparently) decompose them 
into many smaller pieces which can be executed in parallel, using all 
available processing power.

Mark <>
Mark P. Diamond    {amdahl,mtxinu,sun,hoptoad}!rtech!markd markd@rtech.com 
No one ever said it was going to be easy...