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Oracle Beware — Google Tests Cloud-Based Database
narramissic writes "On Tuesday, the same day Google held a press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, the company quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables. Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which would 'allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates,' according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst. 'So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,' said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August. 'If you're IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.'"
Well, to be honest.
I work at a bank. We use something called Fiserve which is a completely hosted Financial services software package.
We open accounts, manage accounts, do our teller stuff, all on software and in databases that we do not own in any way shape or form. It freaks the hell out of me, but it does happen.
I'm interested in how this is going to further web development and online collaboration.
The same way every other technology that is nothing but hype has impacted it. If you don't use it, you won't be cool enough. Therefore everyone will start using it even though the result is a big ugly slow web app that doesn't add much in the way of usability but won't run on most browsers, is error prone on other browsers and takes an up to date beefy system just to run the same basic thing that ran fine on older hardware with the "old" tech.
Seriously though. Why all the relational database and SQL bashing? Someone explain to be what sort of new math people are trying to invent that will invalidate the mathematics of set theory and render it obsolete?
Yes and no.
What they're describing what I'd describe as an OLAP 2.0. They're taking similar capabilities (central data store, cubed data) and combining them with user generated content, sharing and the cloud.
The system looks extremely similar to an BI system.
I'd make an counter point to TFA: I actually think that this is probablly Business Objects / Microstrategy / Cognos's biggest dream: the system shows the power that effectively BI can provide an business with data which is effectively shared and public.
Google are making their business case: give vendor lots-of-money and they can gain the capability over your own data, but in an nicely managable manner (so your competitors won't be getting access to it).
Google seems to be really great at taking a little tiny thing, doing it a couple billion times, and making a few cents off of every transaction.
My guess is that this is aimed more at individuals who are writing blogs and contact managers, not so much corporations with huge development teams and datacenters.
To answer your question: people that don't really think that their data is "top secret".
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Funny you mention that, I saw an article yesterday which claims to have created an encryption scheme where encrypted data can be modified, written into, queried, and anything "that can be eciently expressed as a circuit" by a person without the decryption key.
If I'm reading the paper correctly, it would mean google could host data, and without having access to the data itself, could still permit user lookups and modifications. Of course that doesn't allay concerns of 3rd party reliability, the encryption scheme is inefficient, and this method may not be robust enough to support the complexity of an sql query, but who knows if it wouldn't be possible in the future.