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Keeping Google's In-house Database Ticking

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the need-synonyms-for-huge dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has a short but interesting piece on the what Google did with its 12GB database when it became a challenge for the finance department. The database was split into three, says Chris Schulze, technical program manager for Google — one for the current financial planning projections, one for the actual current data from existing HR and general ledger systems, and one storing historic information. The article says Google has been using a variety of products from Hyperion (recently bought by Oracle) to manage its internal financial systems since 2001."

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Re:WTF WTF? by pasamio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Its an advertisement! Read the bottom: "Angus Kidman travelled to Orlando as a guest of Hyperion". The thing mentions Hyperion a dozen times, its the old trick of substituting news with press releases written by companies.

    --
    I always wondered where this setting was...
  2. Only 12GB? by WapoStyle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't get it, that doesn't seem like much to me.

    We have many databases that are larger here from MSSQL to Oracle, some around the 600GB mark.

    What's so special about Google's database?

  3. Re:WTF WTF? by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not only a press release, it's a very unimpressive one. Hyperion can handle data larger than 12 GB?! Stop the presses! You could manage a company of 50, maybe even 60 employees with that!

    Plus, the "story" says that in order to manage such a large (*cough*) amount of data, the solution was to partition the database into 3 different parts. Now, I can see partitioning it for ease of management along functional areas, but certainly not because it grew to 12 whole gigabytes. If you can't handle chunks of data larger than 4 GB without partitioning it, you're in big trouble.

    I'm guessing the "anonymous reader" who submitted this works for Hyperion.

  4. Press release by gtoomey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    1. Move on, nothing to see
    2. Sack Zonk (sorry man you post some good stories, this ones a stinker)

  5. Glitch in the Matrix by suv4x4 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    FTFA:

    The database grew in size to more than 12 gigabytes, and the period restructuring required to ensure accuracy could see the system, which is now used by more than 150 staff, taken offline for two hours at a stretch.

    "Right now, we're on a not very powerful Windows box," Couglin said.


    Uhmm, maybe it's some other Google, right...?

    I can't be reading a press release from Google, the one that has more or less a copy of the whole Internet on its servers, whining about the difficulties of managing a small database on a slow Windows machine.