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MySQL Creator Contemplates RAM-only Databases
Aavidwriter writes "Peter Wayner asks Michael 'Monty' Widenius of MySQL, 'When will RAM prices make disk drives obsolete for database developers?' From Monty's answers, it sounds like hard drives may be nothing but backups before long." From experience, I'd wager that RAM failure rates are less than hard drive failure rates, so it might also mean more stability from that perspective.
"Recent discussions about disks vs. CPU's have ignored the massive decreases in the cost of RAM"
.. was RAM"
I don't recollect a disk vs CPU debate!
RAM prices might have decreased, but implementing databases over RAM need proprietary architectures over and above RAM, which srives the price up. Let me explain. A commodity $200 PC can support 500GB of disk space (4 * 120GB + USB drives). OTOH a mobo supporting even 4GB of RAM could cost over $2000, and it's likely a proprietary design.
"For a very long time, the secret bottleneck in PC's
Not true. I'd say software bloat is the chief culprit. 1MB-->4MB-->16MB-->64MB-->256MB is the route which DOS to Win3.1 to Win95 to Win2K to WinXP has taken. From the user point of view, from Win95 onwards, there's been nothing great to shout about. S/w is the bottleneck.
" Directly treat remote RAM as a local resource (RDMA) -- a whole new class of zero copy networking. This Is Cool, though there are security issues as internal system architectures get exposed to the rough and tumble world outside the box. "
In the ultimate analysis, a simple architecture works better than a complex one. Already Linux based systems do not have the overhead of checking for millions of viruses, bloatware, inefficient security mechanisms etc. unlike the Windows counterparts. I'd rather design a tightly-coupled cluster of Linux based systems than a high-tech Seti type system.
To sum up, disks are simpler, cheaper, less complicated, stable designs over longer durations and thus, much better. And from the SQL approach, disk-based systems provide protection from DRM.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
So why would anyone use MySQL when there is Postgres? Postgres is such a far superior product. I am so confused by such actions.
That is plain not true. MySQL does have it's own query caching. Even the most entry level databases have that.
The problem with that approach is that the database knows a lot more about what you're doing, so it can make much smarter decisions about what to cache, what to age out, what to prefetch, etc.
You're right. Accept MySQL does have query caching.
Further, if he is thinking in terms of a few Gb of data, then he is a little out of touch with modern database usage.
I like to call this number "software snobbery". Many people compare software applications feature for feature, paying no attention to what their requirements are. The fact is, a very large percent of the database market not need more than a single GB database for their current task. Why have a bunch of databases around our organization that are all a few megabytes large. For the large databases ( ERP ) we use Oracle. The fact is our MySQL deploys outnumber the Oracle deployments, and over time as MySQL and Postressql get better I'm expecting that MySQL will creep into Oracle space as well.
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