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Oracle Promises 100x Faster DB Queries With New In-Memory Option

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "ZDNet reports that Oracle's Larry Elison kicked off Oracle OpenWorld 2013 promising a 100x speed-up querying OTLP database or data warehouse batches by means of a 'dual format' for both row and column in-memory formats for the same data and table. Using Oracle's 'dual-format in-memory database' option, every transaction is recorded in row format simultaneously with writing the same data into a columnar database. 'This is pure in-memory columnar technology,' said Ellison, explaining that means no logging and very little overhead on data changes while the CPU core scans local in-memory columns. Ellison followed up with the introduction of Oracle's new M6-32 'Big Memory Machine,' touted to be the fastest in-memory machine in the world, hosting 32 terabytes of DRAM memory and up to 384 processor cores with 8-threads per core."

174 comments

  1. Oracle gains speed by rossdee · · Score: 4, Funny

    Especially upwind, but not 100x

    still Emirates Team NZ only need to win one more race..to take back the Americas cup

    1. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Especially upwind, but not 100x

      still Emirates Team NZ only need to win one more race..to take back the Americas cup

      Is it a sign of massive greed when one of the first slashdot comments is about the vendors multi-million dollar boat?

      At first glance, one would think "Oracle" is a company devoted to catering high end golf outings and boat racing.

      They make software, right? Oh yeah, of course they do, it's this budget line the size of seven IT salaries, how could I forget...

    2. Re:Oracle gains speed by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At first glance, one would think "Oracle" is a company devoted to catering high end golf outings and boat racing.

      They make software, right?

      Only as a means of raising the money for high end golf outings and boat racing.

    3. Re:Oracle gains speed by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      Anybody know how much this costs?

      (It's Monday morning and I need a good laugh...)

      --
      No sig today...
    4. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They make software, right? Oh yeah, of course they do, it's this budget line the size of seven IT salaries, how could I forget...

      The size of seven IT salaries? You mean like seven times the salary budget for the entire IT staff, right.

    5. Re:Oracle gains speed by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 1

      Well, they can always cheat to go faster...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    6. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me guess....

      more than you would earn in this and the next lifetime?

    7. Re:Oracle gains speed by pinkstuff · · Score: 3, Interesting

      An estimated $100m USD. The winner sets the rules for the next one, so if New Zealand wins they will lower the cost, allowing more teams to able to compete.

    8. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 4, Funny

      At first glance, one would think "Oracle" is a company devoted to catering high end golf outings and boat racing.

      They make software, right?

      Only as a means of raising the money for high end golf outings and boat racing.

      With blackjack and hookers....

    9. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 2

      You only live once but well I hear if you goto hell you program in Fortran all day everyday, forever... They phased out the COBOL because it was much too evil.

    10. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot Hawaiian islands.

    11. Re:Oracle gains speed by ooshna · · Score: 4, Funny

      In fact forget the boat racing and the blackjack.

    12. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh how much I pine for simpler times, when all we had to do was care about were blackjack and hookers.

      BTW, WTF w/ MySQL?

      Larry hates the little people so much, because he sure ain't showin' no love. Not even a dog-bone. ...and don't even get me started on OpenOffice.

    13. Re:Oracle gains speed by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      You still want to keep the high end gold outings, though?

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    14. Re:Oracle gains speed by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

      golF. Not that it's a matters much to the cost.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    15. Re:Oracle gains speed by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1
      Oracle CEO promises faster than light drive

      NASA promises to stop using Russians for manned space flights

      Which of these is more believable?

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    16. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      ...and don't even get me started on OpenOffice.

      Open-office is DEAD to me... Never again... Libra-office has some issues but less than MS WORD if you ask me. It can't do everything WORD can do but who the fuck wants all that stupid shit. If you are a publisher you have to use something better anyway because of the various formating options now... If they aren't then I give them 10 years tops before they die...

    17. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      O... bad form and all but I have to get this out.. FUCK THE CLOUD!

    18. Re:Oracle gains speed by armanox · · Score: 1

      In case you didn't notice they don't have OO anymore.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    19. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      In fact forget the boat racing and the blackjack.

      I think it's funny the man uses wind power to propel his boat when he runs a fucking TECH company... Seems odd if you ask me. Does he wear a skipper hat or a Militarist uniform?

    20. Re:Oracle gains speed by armanox · · Score: 1

      If Larry Elison thought it would be profitable, we'd get FTL drive....

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    21. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      Nope I didn't notice and don't care...

    22. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is this IBM's Data In Memory (DIM) mantra recycled and reworded?
      BLU and SAGE?
      Not logging = with ur; Nothing new here, I reckon this idea is 20 years old at least.

    23. Re:Oracle gains speed by idontgno · · Score: 1

      Seems odd if you ask me. Does he wear a skipper hat or a Militarist uniform?

      You will not speak disrepectfully of El Presidente in this way.

      We're keeping an eye on you.

      -- Oracle Dignity Guard

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    24. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 2

      no no no.. I mean no disrespect, please please do not send me to the data mines... I have a wife with child!

    25. Re:Oracle gains speed by war4peace · · Score: 1

      who the fuck wants all that stupid shit.

      Me and all my customers.
      BTW: they all pay well :)

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    26. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At first glance, one would think "Oracle" is a company devoted to catering high end golf outings and boat racing.

      They make software, right?

      Only as a means of raising the money for high end golf outings and boat racing.

      With blackjack and hookers....

      You mean strippers, right?

    27. Re:Oracle gains speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well if the America's Cup web site (http://www.americascup.com/) is an example of Oracle programming, this going to be another unholy mess.

    28. Re:Oracle gains speed by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Typical shill behavior.
      "He a-usin' Word, he a-sellin' soul to the DEVIL!"

      I feel a lynching mob closing in...

      Seriously though, I don't care in which environment I write my text. I would use a plain text editor and be happy with it, but when my customers (who PAY) ask me "we need this content in .docx format" - I'll do it.
      If they asked "we need this in LaTeX" or "we need this in PDF" or "we need this in LibreOffice" - well, I would be happy top comply.

      It's called customer care.

      It would be interesting to see your face when buying shoes and asking "do you have that in RED?" to which the clerk would say "well FUCK YOU - RED is COMMUNISM and that is THE DEVIL". Him chasing you with a torch and a fork is optional but entertaining.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    29. Re:Oracle gains speed by Pharmboy · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure that isn't profitability that is stopping us from getting FTL drive.

      Maybe it's xenophobia. Last time we did that in the movies, a bunch of pointy eared illegal aliens dropped by.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    30. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 0

      O calm down now.... I have WORD installed still in a VM...

      People use it... Doesn't mean I have to like it. And you where the one saying how much money you make off them... Thats fine, I've been a CTO and a CEO so I understand but most don't want to hear you make money off of them....

      you're doing this shit to yourself. No one made you comment...

    31. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      Typical shill behavior.

      I didn't know open-source had shills? can you please direct me? I will pay you in free software or hookers and blow... Which ever... I'm sure those open source people are loaded....

    32. Re:Oracle gains speed by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I didn't say HOW MUCH money I make. Not a LOT, judging by USA standards. Probably less than half of the average wage in the USA.
      Luckily, I don't live there, so that translates as "paid well" here :)

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    33. Re:Oracle gains speed by davester666 · · Score: 1

      "explaining that means no logging"

      Perfect for the NSA.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    34. Re:Oracle gains speed by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      Lucky you... truly... things are burning down around us here in the land of the freedom...

  2. This comes on the heels of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This article:

    Will Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Stay With MySQL?

    Ellison is doing some public customer relationship management, and I guess this event comes along very timely.

  3. Beowulf by shri · · Score: 2

    " hosting 32 terabytes of DRAM memory and up to 384 processor cores with 8-threads per core. "

    Let me be the first to point out the Beowulf possibilities with a few hundred of these clustered together. :)

    1. Re:Beowulf by kh31d4r · · Score: 1

      But does it run on Solaris?

    2. Re:Beowulf by sjwt · · Score: 2

      Finally a cluster that can Slashdot slashdot.org

      --
      You have 5 Moderator Points!
      Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
    3. Re:Beowulf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Let me be the first to point out the Beowulf possibilities

      Not very good ones. Why would you cluster these with commodity hardware available that you can tweak more generously? If you're just trying to make a throwback comment to the days when you didn't have the availability of hardware, that we have now, you might as well talk about how putting together oracle yachts could make an impressive navy. Both comments are equally ignorant of purpose and comedic value. I award you no karma, amateur.

    4. Re: Beowulf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bloody coward

    5. Re:Beowulf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      But does it run on Solaris?

      Sadly, no. In fact it won't even function as a Minecraft server without some patches and a Java update. I hear that Oracle is still waiting on the vendor for Java update.

    6. Re:Beowulf by ae1294 · · Score: 2

      Finally a cluster that can Slashdot slashdot.org

      Not running oracle it can't!
      {I never worked with it. They seemed to much like a drug dealer when they came around, they had a building here in SE-VA in Chesapeake}

    7. Re: Beowulf by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      I wanna see a Beowulf of Arduino ATmega328 chips. They cost 4 bucks!

      The high-performance Atmel 8-bit AVR RISC-based microcontroller combines 32 KB ISP flash memory with read-while-write capabilities, 1 KB EEPROM, 2 KB SRAM, 23 general purpose I/O lines, 32 general purpose working registers, three flexible timer/counters with compare modes, internal and external interrupts,serial programmable USART, a byte-oriented 2-wire serial interface, SPI serial port, 6-channel 10-bit A/D converter (8-channels in TQFP and QFN/MLF packages), programmable watchdog timer with internal oscillator, and five software selectable power saving modes. The device operates between 1.8-5.5 volts. By executing powerful instructions in a single clock cycle, the device achieves throughputs approaching 1 MIPS per MHz, balancing power consumption and processing speed.

    8. Re:Beowulf by nmb3000 · · Score: 1

      hosting 32 terabytes of DRAM memory and up to 384 processor cores with 8-threads per core.

      Good news everyone! There's finally a machine that can run a Minecraft server without throwing a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError!

      --
      "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
      /)
    9. Re:Beowulf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hosting 32 terabytes of DRAM memory and up to 384 processor cores with 8-threads per core.

      Good news everyone! There's finally a machine that can run a Minecraft server without throwing a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError!

      Or it would be able to, if the JRE allowed custom parameters instead of being locked down to "improve speed". ;)

    10. Re:Beowulf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not so far off..

      One of Oracle's looming threats (not their biggest), is the rise of distributed databases engines that can manage these vast datasets. Systems based on hadoop/map-reduce can process data for a lot less than traditional databases. The thing hampering this is that the applications aren't yet written to take advantage of these distributed engines. That is changing fast.

      So, on the low end people are turning to Postgresql or other "small" databases that cost a lot less than Oracle. On the high end, people are moving to cloud-based solutions. The middle tier is shrinking fast.

    11. Re: Beowulf by kermidge · · Score: 1

      Sounds like it could be fun. The problem areas I see are doing interconnects and finding an OS that'll efficiently manage I/O, memory use, apportioning and riding herd on processes including apps, a good user management console, and then it's just down to finding or writing programs to play with data.

      As you can see, I don't know squat about this stuff, but I do mean it seems interesting. I'd like to see what somebody might cook up. Given the I/O capabilities it seems to me a cluster might be able to handle some interesting real-time operations of appropriate time frames, not just off-line data crunching, but that's just a guess.

      Re the article, again, it looks interesting. That's just my bent towards moar cores and RAM; I'd like to see feedback from customers after a while using one or more M6-32 setups, and then some comparisons with alternate systems.

      So far down in the thread, and no one has asked if it will run Crysis. Perhaps that's been deprecated.

    12. Re: Beowulf by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      Else you could try to get a parallella board if you are interested in parallel computing. You need to connect less of them together.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    13. Re: Beowulf by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      Yes the bus work would not be a problem with the cheap IO chips that interface with them as far as ram you would have to go back to a older DOS method I guess EMS or something alike but there is little power to the chips but who says you can't run them as 128bit fused chips or 1024bit fused chips but you could do some interesting things.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_memory

    14. Re: Beowulf by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      yup.... I was just thinking of something weird and wacko... I am currently making a system using those little things to make a monitor system that checks temps, has a mic to detect RF or odd sounds and check voltages and current for my systems... Pre-fault detectors for a parallel rig I hope to build...

  4. Great news for NSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    With increasing surveillance on American citizens such database will provide security forces with instant profile of each person. Let's combine that with license plate scanning, cell phone tracking, sexual preferences and health records.

    Now we can sleep well at night, our children are safe.

    1. Re:Great news for NSA by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Not sure why you got modded as funny.

      When it's scary as fuck.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    2. Re:Great news for NSA by leuk_he · · Score: 1

      If you not living in the amerikas but in the United states of europe, It is so unthought of, it is funny.

      But wait... what is that camera doing there....

  5. One Big Memory Machination by VortexCortex · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Big Memory Machine"... So, they finally built Deepthought?

    In-memory IO is grand, when that's your're bottleneck. Mine tends to be in the network level, so I use a local daemon for query result caching at the application level as "in-memory" speedup. The speedups are nice, but pricey. Color me unimpressed -- that's pink, BTW; I'm a Caucasoid your colors may vary, but only up to VARCHAR(20);

    Uhg. Is "in memory" now just another buz-word? I guess we've come full circle back to Mainframe? Big memory banks are faster and better for a while, but then the bandwidth goes up and the price, reliability and scalability will favor distributed systems (as currently). I wonder which phase of the cycle quantum computing will favor: distributed / localized? You have to take into consideration your user distribution too...

    So, eventually you'll want a hybrid system where the memory is distributed and cloned at each query-able interface, but still maintaining the entire dataset "in memory"...
    SELECT * FROM earth WHERE answer LIKE "everything";
    ...
    42 rows returned

    1. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot to join on universe and life...

      Anyway... Is this not just a new feature to facilitate some extra licensing models...

    2. Re:One Big Memory Machination by knightghost · · Score: 1

      Distributed processing requires cache duplication and parallel problems. ERP systems don't follow that. It's the main reason RAC failed.

    3. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you used ECC memory, the answer wouldn't have been 42.

    4. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "your're"? that's a new one...

    5. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Color me unimpressed -- that's pink, BTW; I'm a Caucasoid your colors may vary, but only up to VARCHAR(20);

      I'm a 'semi-translucent American' so I was just truncated, you inconsiderate clod!

      SELECT * FROM earth WHERE answer LIKE "everything";

      Was this "LIKE "everything"; " a typo?
      - you can speed it up around 100x if you used "= 'everything';"
      - you can get more results from "LIKE '%everything%';"

    6. Re:One Big Memory Machination by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      I wonder if all that RAM has ECC or not... I am betting not....

    7. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What happens to this database when you pour ACID on it?

    8. Re:One Big Memory Machination by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      What happens to this database when you pour ACID on it?

      Ummm I guess it gets high and starts handing out random information it has stored. Quick someone slip the NSA computers some LSD!

    9. Re:One Big Memory Machination by doomsayerxero · · Score: 3, Funny

      That should be Varchar2(20).

      --
      Don't screw up, don't throw up.
    10. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would actually be:

      SELECT * FROM earth WHERE answer LIKE "life" AND where answer LIKE "universe" AND where answer LIKE "everything"; ...
      1 row returned
      OUTPUT answer;
      42

    11. Re:One Big Memory Machination by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Distributed processing requires an application that won't crap itself when you try to scale it on a larger piece of single hardware. A poorly written app doesn't need a cluster in order to fall apart.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    12. Re:One Big Memory Machination by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      The cloud is effectively a reinvention of the mainframe. IBM should sue them.

    13. Re:One Big Memory Machination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Caching is necessary in SMP and NUMA systems like this too. It's just that this machine has over 1TByte/sec of intercore interconnect inside a 48-way zone, and over 200GB/sec across the entire 384-way NUMA domain, and the caching is invisible* to the programmer and assembly language.

      *It's not really invisible, you still have to think about it and optimise cache usage, you just don't have to program it, it happens automatically in hardware.

      And yea, I wish I had this machine when I was doing MRP. Though I would be running PostgreSQL as it scales better than Oracle and is easier to use.

      I don't know what the latest buzzing about in-memory databases is, I mean, I run in-memory jobs on Postgres and MySQL all the time. You can either put the database on a tmpfs, or in MySQL, just create an in-memory table. Yea, it's faster, so what? It's also entirely obvious to any DBA.

  6. Again by hebertrich · · Score: 2

    As long as they keep with the extorsion techniques Oracle is famous for they can keep their hardware.

    1. Re:Again by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      Yea, no shit... is it License renewal time for anyone else right now? Oracles the fucking devil.

  7. Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Wow, just catching up to Microosft. like SQL Server In-Memory OLTP http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn133186(v=sql.120).aspx
    And Column Store Indexes released 2 years ago. http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2011/10/29/sql-server-fundamentals-of-columnstore-index/

    1. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Tridus · · Score: 1

      I dunno, Microosft can make a decent .net provider for their database. Oracle has all kinds of catching up to do in that department.

      --
      -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
    2. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're clueless if you don't think in-memory is catching up.

    3. Re:Like Microsoft SQL Server by homb · · Score: 2

      I don't think it's in the same ballpark. The SQL Server column store seems to be purely for read-only:

      Keep in mind that once you add a column store to a table, though, you cannot delete, insert or update the data – it is READ ONLY.

      That's nowhere near the complexity of what Oracle is doing, simultaneously providing both a row and column based access to the data. Not that I think this is a good thing, I don't. In most cases you're much better off using a kickass columnar db and handling the batch updates from the upstream app servers. When you plan for building a col-based architecture, you can be much more efficient. Just look at kdb & co.

    4. Re:Like Microsoft SQL Server by SDrag0n · · Score: 3, Interesting
      --
      I don't have time to make a sig
    5. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, one of the "Oracle is better at everything forever and ever and ever and ever" people. I know it's hard to keep up on database trends but if, by chance, you are someone who claims to be a database professional then you might want to do a better job of keeping up.

    6. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahhaha...I get modded down for disrespecting SQL Server? On Slashdot, no less... My god are you people delusional.

    7. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for your input. I am only a DBA for the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company. I deal with dozens of Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM databases daily. The systems that have the highest activity and run our most critical systems are always on Oracle. No exceptions.

    8. Re:Like Microsoft SQL Server by NatasRevol · · Score: 0

      LOL at Microsoft saying they'll get to something 'next year'.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    9. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If AC uses Oracle for everything, that for sure means its the only system that can handle it and thus proves it best by default.

    10. Re:Like Microsoft SQL Server by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Only 2 years ago? And you're seriously going to brag about it?

      You're bringing a knife to a gunfight and you think it's a mini-gun.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    11. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's anecdotal experience stating that when $60 billion US in sales is at risk, the powers that be at my company choose to trust Oracle above all others. That is all. Would you have gotten all tingly in your My Little Pony Underoos if I had said MySQL or PostgreSQL instead?

    12. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but really because I'll take "tingly in my underoos" any time I can get it. What it really boils down to is anytime someone says "this is the best solution and all the others are behind", I consider it a joke. If you can't be bothered to do a real analysis, look at different tools, and consider that other companies have options that might be just as good or better or different, then you probably shouldn't be in a position to be making decisions.

      Please come back and go "I do look at other tools, Oracle is just always the best".

      (Also, throwing out "I work for giant company X with giant money Y" doesn't mean you know jack shit... Doesn't mean you don't either so maybe stop worrying about how impressive your magical anonymous company is and throw out some reasons you think Oracle beats all instead. Have a nice day)

    13. Re: Like Microsoft SQL Server by lgw · · Score: 1

      So that's, what, a few hundred DB servers? There's a reason that none of the shops that use 10K-100K DB servers per application use Oracle (unless you count MySQL, but migration away from that has begun).

      You're probably stuck in the old school, where it actually matters if any given DB server is incredibly reliable. I remember those days - those were expensive days - and that need was always better served by mainframes.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    14. Re:Like Microsoft SQL Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The beta is out... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205290.aspx

  8. This merely allows poor code to suck less. by pla · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First, let me say that I would love to have a table option to keep a particularly heavily-hit table always in memory.

    This ain't it.

    From TFA, "Maintaining those indexes is expensive and slows down transaction processing. Let's get rid of them," Ellison remarked. "Let's throw all of those analytic indexes away and replace the indexes with in-memory column sort."

    This merely minimizes the penalties of poor indexing and RBAR by making complete table scans on arbitrary columns faster. Apparently Mr. Ellison has forgotten his algoithmics and combinatorics - Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore. Pity, because had he stayed, he would have learned that even with a 1000x slower storage medium, an O(log N) algorithm (index seek) will eventually beat an O(N log N) algorithm (column sort).

    Thanks, Larry, but you want to make Oracle faster? Remove cursors from the core language, and although that alone won't "fix" it, you'll see all the hacks who can't think in set-based logic drop out overnight.

    1. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by homb · · Score: 3, Informative

      From TFA, "Maintaining those indexes is expensive and slows down transaction processing. Let's get rid of them," Ellison remarked. "Let's throw all of those analytic indexes away and replace the indexes with in-memory column sort."

      This merely minimizes the penalties of poor indexing and RBAR by making complete table scans on arbitrary columns faster. Apparently Mr. Ellison has forgotten his algoithmics and combinatorics - Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore. Pity, because had he stayed, he would have learned that even with a 1000x slower storage medium, an O(log N) algorithm (index seek) will eventually beat an O(N log N) algorithm (column sort).

      I think you misunderstand the way columnar databases work. They are not doing a column sort the way you think. The column itself is an index.
      Of course the inanities coming out of Ellison's mouth don't help explain things correctly. No Larry, you don't do away with indexes. You mostly store indexes on everything, automatically.

      Thanks, Larry, but you want to make Oracle faster? Remove cursors from the core language, and although that alone won't "fix" it, you'll see all the hacks who can't think in set-based logic drop out overnight.

      Can't argue there!

    2. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by oranGoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From TFA, "Maintaining those indexes is expensive and slows down transaction processing. Let's get rid of them," Ellison remarked. "Let's throw all of those analytic indexes away and replace the indexes with in-memory column sort." This merely minimizes the penalties of poor indexing and RBAR by making complete table scans on arbitrary columns faster. Apparently Mr. Ellison has forgotten his algoithmics and combinatorics - Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore. Pity, because had he stayed, he would have learned that even with a 1000x slower storage medium, an O(log N) algorithm (index seek) will eventually beat an O(N log N) algorithm (column sort).

      RTA - the improvement is there specifically for real time analytic workloads. In these kind of workflows the optimal algorithm is O(n) in general case and indexes are useless (query optimizing engine will always choose scans as you need to visit a lot of data). You might know a thing or two about algorithms, but you should brush up on problem analysis 101.

      Other mistakes in logic: Index seek and column sort are not different algorithms for the same task so comparing them brings little insight (without considering some other details of the query optimizer). This leads you to nonsensical claim that O(log N) will eventually beat or be equal to O(N log N). It is not eventually, the first will be always faster or equal.

    3. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This leads you to nonsensical claim that O(log N) will eventually beat or be equal to O(N log N). It is not eventually, the first will be always faster or equal.

      Er... no, not if you think about constant terms. Consider 8 * (log N) + 3 > 2 * ( N log N) for N=4 for example. Big O notation is about the asymptotic performance for large N. It's quite common that the most efficient algorithms for large data sets may provide no benefit for trivial cases and may in fact be slower.

    4. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Jorl17 · · Score: 1

      woosh!

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      Have you heard about SoylentNews?
    5. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by pla · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Okay, you'll have to 'splain it too me as well then, because I don't see the joke (and only refrained from posting substantially the same response because an AC beat me to it).

      Memory runs roughly 1000x faster than disk (it can get down to around 50x on an array of SSDs, but up to 100,000x for random seeks across physical platters). Holding all else equal, 1000*O(log N) will take longer than 1*O(N log N) until N=1000, despite the lower time complexity. Additionally, the AC made a good point about the relative constant factor of the algorithms themselves, in that a binary search of a sorted list has virtually no overhead, while a good general purpose sorting algorithm does.


      And all that said, yes, I see now that I made an error because this change applies to columnar rather than row-oriented data; O(log N) will still eventually beat O(N), however.

    6. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by rev0lt · · Score: 1

      (...) Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore (...)

      If a guy had to go the university to learn algorithmics (or how the O(n) notation works), I'd be pretty f*****.

    7. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Luyseyal · · Score: 1

      No kidding. I was just looking through some vendor PL/SQL and there you have it: a cursor looping through rows to find the most recent date in a column instead of using a dad-blasted ORDER BY clause and limiting rows to 1 result. What the...???

      -l

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    8. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 1

      Look you can't trust those database queries. The syntax is so simple you can't possibly be certain that it's not making a mistake without checking every possible row. It's not like there's any way to be sure the database doesn't have invalid data!

      I recently looked at a stored proc used on our system. It uses nested cursors. And the cursors are all defined as "scrollable" meaning they take far more memory than normal, even though the procedure never does anything other than "fetch next". Oh, and the entire proc could be eliminated with two MERGE statements making the process nearly instantaneous instead of taking 20-30 minutes.

      I'm tempted to submit it as a bug report.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    9. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Luyseyal · · Score: 1

      Do it! Make the world a better place, 1 query at a time.

      -l

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    10. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by Jorl17 · · Score: 1

      My "woosh!" was in agreement with the AC's response! I totally agree with it, and find it somewhat ironical that parent, the one with the mistake, stated that gp should "brush up on problem analysis 101".

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    11. Re:This merely allows poor code to suck less. by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Once I saw a system running "SELECT * FROM customers,orders" to find the last customer and order number for a week end sales report, because the only SQL the developer knew was "SELECT * FROM". It was annoying to track down because the server would crash, running out of memory for that join, before it was logged it as a slow query. There was no evidence of what happened unless you caught it while it was running, and the damn thing fired at 4AM on a weekend morning.

  9. HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of that memory corrupts, Shhhh !! Who is going to know !! Back in the day INT2 would save our asses but that is no more !! Today it is better to let the errors creep than to report !! And no, ECC does not save itself !! ECC lets vendors sell defective RAM !! Bet your life on that !!??

    32 TB is 256 T bits which is 2 ^

    1. Re:HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      32 TB is 256 T bits which is 2 ^

      What a turn off. I'll wait for the 64 TB version, TYVM. Hell, even the new iPhone is 64 bit now ;-)

    2. Re:HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by sethmeisterg · · Score: 1

      Huh? ECC corrects 1-bit errors and detects >1-bit errors. There is no corruption. Stop the nonsense and get off the crack pipe.

    3. Re:HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by lgw · · Score: 1

      ECC often detects and corrects errors, but it's not perfect, but then neither is the checksum in FC or iSCSI reads. They all have issues at this scale. Not a problem with the concept, just with implementations that saw 2^32 as a big number.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    4. Re:HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Disk is much more corrective using super error correction.

    5. Re:HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET !! by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      There's a new SSD twist to this class of problem popping up more lately too. When SSDs wear out, they will sometimes quietly lose data. People doing SSD endurance testing with Anvil's tool stop the system periodically to see if it still works after being powered off for a bit. That's how some overused SSDs die at the end, and it's seriously ugly.

  10. Dual format by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Finally, the reason Oracle requires joining to dual is revealed.

  11. OTLP? by tonywestonuk · · Score: 1

    whats OTLP?

    1. Re:OTLP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's see:
      TLA = Three Letter Algorithm
      OTP = One Time Pad
      OLPC = One Laptop Per Child
      therefore
      OTLP = One Three Letter PerChildLapTopPadAlgorithmWithOffByOneError

    2. Re:OTLP? by wmac1 · · Score: 1

      How about using google to find out?

      http://datawarehouse4u.info/OLTP-vs-OLAP.html

    3. Re:OTLP? by buddyglass · · Score: 1

      Oh, I thought we were talking about Original Licensed Thermal Power.

      http://www.acronymfinder.com/Original-Licensed-Thermal-Power-(nuclear)-(OLTP).html

      Google lies!

    4. Re:OTLP? by Megane · · Score: 2

      One Top Lap Per child.

      --
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    5. Re:OTLP? by tonywestonuk · · Score: 1

      No - Cant find anything about OTLP

      Only Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)..... Whichi is not OTLP

  12. Sorry, but isn't this just SAP HANA? by yooy · · Score: 1
    1. Re:Sorry, but isn't this just SAP HANA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_HANA

      No, SAP HANA is just an in-memory database.

      This sounds more like Teradata, but in-memory.

      Or Sybase IQ, if you want to stay in the SAP stable.

    2. Re:Sorry, but isn't this just SAP HANA? by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      No one really wants to stay in the SAP stable. It just costs so much to get in there, it's easier to keep cleaning up after the horses all day rather than to risk leaving.

  13. Oracle-friendly site(s) by SigmundFloyd · · Score: 2

    14 hours ago, itnews.com.au runs a story (promptly picked up by /.) about how the social networks are staying with MySQL. In the article, it is suggested that the switch to MariaDB by some Linux distros is a "political move", and that Google's switch might be a retaliation against an unrelated lawsuit from Oracle. Also, it's mentioned (twice, with the same wording) that the Mozilla foundation is "upgrading from MariaDB to MySQL 5.6" (emphasis added).

    7 hours ago, itnews.com.au runs a story (promptly picked up by /.) about how Oracle's 12C database will be 100x faster, despite the fact that we only have Oracle's CEO word for it.

    Now that's what I call an Oracle-friendly site (or two?)

    --
    Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      MySQL is a piece of shit. MongoDB and PostgreSQL, depending on the data layout (MongoDB if you're looking for an indexed XML-YAML-JSON type of data with reliable data integrity in a cluster; PostgreSQL if you're looking for an indexed CSV with good replication and only minimal probability of basically silent data loss in a fail-over scenario).

    2. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by citizenr · · Score: 1

      MongoDB
      reliable
      data integrity
      in a cluster

      You mean if you run 3 copies of same database and constantly compare them with each other so in case of discrepancy you can at least guess which one is correct?

      --
      Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
    3. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      Now that's what I call an Oracle-friendly site (or two?)

      Consider it a testament to corporate PR:
      Get journalists to the conference and then pump them full of press releases.

      Brett Winterford travelled to OpenWorld as a guest of Oracle.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by rtaylor · · Score: 2

      MongoDB makes a great caching layer.

      Write your data to Pg into a permanent data-store. Use a trigger to push the data into MongoDB (foreign data wrapper).

      Enjoy the query benefits of Mongo and the reliability of Pg with the caveat that you need to occasionally rebuild your cache (MongoDB copy).

      --
      Rod Taylor
    5. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Or Oracle is hosting a large event which generally produces a lot of news related to the host.

      You will also probably see a good bit of Apple News during Apple World Wide Developer Conference. Probably a good deal of Microsoft news during BUILD and a good deal of iD news during Quake Con. Companies have discovered that hosting their own conferences allows them to flood the news for a day instead of attending group conventions like GDC or CES and having to share the headlines with a 100 other companies.

    6. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, I mean MongoDB will take a 3 database cluster and let you "Replica Acknowledge" a transaction with "Majority" count. Once it hits 50%+1 servers, it's 100% guaranteed solid unless you lose both servers. If both servers suffer a power drop at that point, the last server refuses to accept writes; when those servers come back, they will replay their oplog back to the last server to synchronize it. There's one flaw here: there's no "Replica Journal Acknowledge", so it's theoretically possible to lose that transaction anyway; both servers have to suffer a system failure (power drop, kernel panic) within 100mS of receiving the operation, since they write out their data to disk every 100mS. In practice this is extremely unlikely.

      That means once you've sent it and gotten back that it's written, it is written. You'd have to lose both (or more--3 servers in a cluster of 5, etc.) servers' power or hard drives (corruption, failure) before the data is propagated further.

      By contrast, Percona and MariaDB have XtraDB. XtraDB does optimistic locking: in normal autocommit, the transaction might get rolled back silently--it will write successfully to one server and return success, but if another server simultaneously gets a write that conflicts and starts propagating it then the transaction will be silently rolled back (i.e. undone, removed, lost, failed). With BEGIN-COMMIT transactions, you may get a Deadlock on "COMMIT" and then you're informed that it did in fact roll back the transaction and you must re-submit (i.e. do this if you actually care about durability of the data). With autocommit, as well as with any transactions (even explicit COMMIT) on MySQL master-slave replication or PostgreSQL WAL replication, you may in fact be informed that the transaction is 100% committed and then have that server FAIL and the slave comes up without that transaction--unavoidable silent data loss.

      The failure mode expressed by MySQL master-slave replication and PostgreSQL WAL replication in the default asynchronous streaming replication mode is the same failure mode as with "Journaled" write concern in MongoDB. When running "Journaled" rather than "Replica Acknowledged," you write to exactly one server and are told it's committed when it's written to disk--it's durable on that server, but not necessarily replicated. If that server power drops and comes back up, it may find new operations have made its non-replicated operations invalid; it will then silently roll those back.

      Therefor, in cluster layouts, it is possible for MongoDB to have a negligible reliability advantage over PostgreSQL's most common replication methods. PostgreSQL has settings that make up that last bit of reliability, putting it roughly on par with MongoDB. MongoDB has a guaranteed "It has reached enough servers that it is valid on the cluster unless God hates you" write concern by which the data is likely to actually be there if it tells you it's there, unless a very specific subset of servers experience a catastrophic failure in an extremely small (tenths of a second) window--a subset large enough to take down your entire cluster.

      Short version: MongoDB allows you to, on a per-query basis, write data into the database at any level of reliability that MySQL and PostgreSQL provide. Single-server Journaled (WAL log shipping, WAL asynchronous streaming, MySQL master-slave replication), multi-server Replica Acknowledged (PostgreSQL WAL synchronous streaming), and a single-server "Acknowledged" mode that is faster but gives a weaker data durability guarantee (transaction is valid, not yet to disk, and not replicated).

      *"PostgreSQL streaming replication is asynchronous by default. If the primary server crashes then some transactions that were committed may not have been replicated to the standby server, causing data loss. The amount of data loss is proportional to the replication delay at the time of failover."

    7. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      PostgreSQL does have a synchronous commit mechanism mechanism too, which requires data be durably written to two nodes. It has a feature that as far as I know is unique to its implementation too: synchronous_commit is a per-transaction behavior. You have to specifically setup a synchronous standby server, but once it's there you can adjust the durability level you want at each commit. So you can pay for important data be fully synchronous, while streaming by less important things in standard mode, where you might lose a little on failover. You can even drop commit level from the default too, so that something you can afford to lose all copies of on a crash avoids any sort of disk commit before completing.

      Since synchronous transactions block if there's not a second node around, in practice you have to deploy 3 nodes (to be able to tolerate losing one) and commits go to 2 of them. It doesn't have the ability to rollback locally committed transactions from a sever that's been disconnected yet though, that's a weak point compared to Mongo. A disconnected node that committed transactions nobody else saw is FUBAR, you have to rebuild the entire node to fix it.

    8. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Writeable foreign data wrappers for PostgreSQL just appeared in 9.3, released a few weeks ago. I'm looking forward to seeing the hybrid storage approaches people build with that, with triggers pushing into a FDW being just one of the possibilities. All sorts of neat data queuing approaches are possible if you also combine that with the new background workers interface. You don't even need to make the FDW write synchronous. When eventual consistency is good enough for your data set, you can have the trigger push them into a queue, and then spool those in the background to other places (like a Mongo or Redis cache) via FDW.

    9. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by kermidge · · Score: 1

      The lucid in your handle is valid; yours is the first explanation on making sure that data has gotten to where it's supposed to that I've been able to follow. (This stuff is so far from anything I know about as to be beyond laughable but I'm curious nonetheless.) Thank you.

      However I may not have followed as well as I think, so a question, if I may: for the "extremely unlikely" case in the first para, would you know the transaction has been lost and be able to re-do it (i.e., rather than finding out later from the logs)? Sorry if I'm way out of line, but already said I was stupid.

    10. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      "Extremely unlikely" comes out because the data's been replicated enough that it should be propagating further. Notably, 50%+1 nodes, so 2 nodes in a 3 node cluster, or 3 of 5, or 5 of 7. The data is also flushed to disk every 100mS ("j" write concern on a single node flushes the journal immediately and won't acknowledge until it's on disk). Once the data is to disk, it's 100% guaranteed to be there if the server experiences a recoverable system failure (power drop, kernel panic); it will be lost if it experiences filesystem corruption or a hard disk failure.

      If you have more than 50% of the replica set go down, the whole cluster stops. The cluster is now refusing writes. If a replica node comes up with the data on disk, it will successfully propagate through the replica set and the data will not be lost.

      To fail this, you need every replica node to acknowledge that it's got the data and then immediately fail in the 100mS window between acknowledging the query and writing it to disk; or you need them to suffer fatal hard disk failure or file system corruption and a system halt before they forward the data on to the others in the replica set. All of them. If you have a set of three, you need the primary and one of the secondaries to both fail; the primary won't acknowledge the transaction at all until 50%+1 of the replica set has it (one secondary in a replica set of 3), so the window of failure there is actually quite small,

      As you can imagine, this involves a very carefully orchestrated exact sequence of catastrophic events each with low probability of occurring over long timescales. A system failure in any given 8.76 hour period has a 1 in 1,000 chance in a system that has 99.9% uptime. We're talking about two systems failing in exact windows of 0.1 seconds in tandem; two systems failing in the same 8.76 hour period has a probability p=1/1,000,000 with 99.9% uptime. There are 315,569.26 0.1 second periods in each 8.76 hour period, giving a probability of failure in any of these at the exact moment required of 1 in 315,569,260; probability of two exact failures in the correct way for a replica set of three is 1 in 99,583,957,900. With 99.99% uptime, it's 1 in 99,583,957,900,000,000. Note that the window is actually smaller than 0.1 seconds because it'll occur between a journal flush most likely, so it's more like a 50mS window on average and the numbers I gave should be doubled (1 in 2n).

      It's a small window. PostgreSQL's synchronous WAL replication is 100% guaranteed if it acknowledges the transaction, because it doesn't acknowledge until both servers hit the disk; the only data loss possible is the even less likely case of both servers destroying their disks completely at the same time (actually this is probably more likely: the window of data loss would be, at a minimum, the time it takes to react to a failover by running an immediate automated backup; and even then, you're no longer streaming new data to another server). In a three-way replica set on PostgreSQL with synchronous WAL (Master and two Slaves), you need three such failures and thus your risk of data loss is slightly lower than MongoDB (again, because that third server will 100% guarantee data to disk before you get a successful COMMIT; but then you've got a wider window for disk failure on the last one).

      Probability of failure is low.

    11. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      PostgreSQL has settings that make up that last bit of reliability, putting it roughly on par with MongoDB.

      And...

      Short version: MongoDB allows you to, on a per-query basis, write data into the database at any level of reliability that MySQL and PostgreSQL provide. Single-server Journaled (WAL log shipping, WAL asynchronous streaming, MySQL master-slave replication), multi-server Replica Acknowledged (PostgreSQL WAL synchronous streaming), and a single-server "Acknowledged" mode that is faster but gives a weaker data durability guarantee (transaction is valid, not yet to disk, and not replicated).

    12. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Look at that, MongoDB write concerns have been improved since I last checked. Thanks for usefully pointing to that as a reference, instead of, say, quoting yourself just to be smug.

    13. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      As I was comparatively defending MongoDB, which was facing criticism for being "unreliable" compared to traditional SQL-interface fixed-column row-based relational database software, I felt the need to point at the documentation for PostgreSQL (a top tier product) while explaining the potential for data loss in its replication configurations. Trying to spout a bunch of fluff about how PostgreSQL typically has a window of data loss in replication configurations aside from an expensive synchronous setting without actually bringing documentation to back it up could easily be interpreted as selective reporting and poisoning the well.

      I didn't feel the need to cite MongoDB's docs because they are incredibly easy to dig through (PostgreSQL's docs take some extra legwork to find something relevant--google can hit it if you know what you're looking for, but there is a lot of WAL and replication stuff that doesn't quite contain the wording and explanation I need; the page I found is perfect for this) and because it's harder to apply bad faith to that part of the conversation. To discuss PostgreSQL in bad faith, I would have to omit things like PostgreSQL WAL synchronous streaming; to discuss MongoDB in bad faith I would have to insert false statements which can be quickly verified as false.

    14. Re:Oracle-friendly site(s) by kermidge · · Score: 1

      Wow, fantastic, and thank you.

      And yep, I followed that. Your posts give me a much better grounding when reading about datacenter, server, and DB stuff, and help me separate wheat from chaff. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and having the patience to explain it.

  14. 32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2

    Just you hope Oracle maintains the batteries properly, especially since an emergency save-to-disk is going to take more than a few minutes...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

      lol, you should see our battery room. We've got a 10 story building and every single computer in it is on the UPS. And that is just there to keep everything up long enough for the two 500hp natural gas generators can kick in. They feed off both the city feed as well as have their own separate tanks. Short of a meteor hitting the building the power will never go out. And we're pretty much small time.

    2. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Short of a meteor hitting the building the power will never go out

      A small fire in a strategic place... Or perhaps, just some minor failure of something you thought was separated enough.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Just you hope Oracle maintains the batteries properly, especially since an emergency save-to-disk is going to take more than a few minutes...

      Obviously, if you are in the market for a machine with 32TB of RAM, your problem is probably important and/or expensive enough to not skimp on (relatively) cheap details like backup power; but, so long as you were willing to stop what you were doing and dump to disk, 32TB wouldn't be too bad.

      Magnetics can't do random I/O for shit; but even the cheap consumer crap plays surprisingly nicely with linear reads or writes (high areal density will do that for you).

      You would never actually want to shut down such a beast (even aside from whatever the downtime costs you, pure depreciation probably costs more per hour than the team running the thing); but doing a straight linear dump to HDD would be totally doable on some fairly prosaic storage hardware.

    4. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      two 500hp natural gas generators can kick in.

      Two is definitely a good idea. One workplace I was at had a 20MW generator that was started for testing every month for thirty years without fail and then just could not get going the day it was needed.

    5. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by mjwalshe · · Score: 0

      you are testing your gensets every day right

    6. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by mjwalshe · · Score: 1

      Maybe not do they have mo e than one feed for the grid? though this sounds like a telco exchange set up (central office for you colonials)

    7. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by ae1294 · · Score: 1

      I'm so glad you just said that...
      A pox upon your data center! Curses, unknowable horrid darkness will be at your throat, unseen and without form.... Soon... May it consume your data and your soul for my Master waits for the...

    8. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Here's one supplier of many that can feed a mountain of such machines
      http://cfaspower.com/11MW-20MW_CTG.html
      Note the age of some of the things. This stuff is not rocket science, it's 1950s jet engine science!

    9. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      my favorite is when the UPS gets input power in a waveform it just doesn't quite like, and instead of going to straight battery--or conditioning the power, it just turns everything off.

    10. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. My former company had a genny that worked reliably. They did some routine work on it, I believe changed the oil, and didn't reset a sensor (or the sensor failed) and the next week a power outage hit, the UPS's ran down and the genny did not turn on.

      For added fun, the power then proceeded to blink and bounce servers up and then down again since the UPS's didn't have time to charge.

      We had to shut everything down and then try to bring it up in order. It was messy.

    11. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wait until building water pressure fails and your cooling system no longer works...and your backup data center also fails because of the same problem. Fannie Mae has this issue with Hurricane Isabel coming through the Washington DC metro area. Pretty much both the primary and backup datacenter were both in Fairfax County and large parts of the county lost power and water pressure(no power to run the water pumps). The generators worked just fine though, but there sure was in a panic to get several tanker trucks of water delivered to get cooling back online...

    12. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With HANA, every transaction is written to disk as it's happening. You don't wait with the data and then save to disk all at once.

    13. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by larien · · Score: 2
      *facepalm*

      No, you don't use main memory as a write cache, that would be idiotic. You use it for read cache. Any updates will be written to disk (and memory) before acknowledging to the client.

      In any case, it doesn't matter how good your batteries/UPS are if your server or DB software crashes for any reason and you have uncommitted writes in memory, hence why caching writes on a database is a Bad Idea (TM).

    14. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whats the expected lifetime of one of those generators? Especially when you only start them once a monthfor some hours? (Honest question. I dont know but had to close my office wi dow once a month because of tests lke that fr years ;))

    15. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      California only lets you test monthly. EPA and all.

    16. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      There's two answers - running hours (general wear) and number of starts (thermal fatigue). The second number will be huge to the point of being ignorable if the generator doesn't run hot. The first number will be many thousands of hours. The 20MW example I gave above is still in service after fifty years with the original motor but an upgraded generator set. I'm not sure if it's ever been run at full load though, and I think 20MW is the maximum energy output (used for takeoff when the motors were in 1950s jet fighters) of the motor with the electrical output being much less.
      Wings tend to start falling off while engines are still in good shape so a lot of jet engines have found their way into being "gas turbines" in the energy generation sector, and the little ones make good backup generators used for things like kick starting coal fired power stations when all units are offline and the connection to the grid is untrustworthy. Powering a datacentre is trivial compared with running coal crushers, conveyors etc.

    17. Re:32TB of RAM = Everest-sized UPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's for running MRP/ERP and other linear programming/cross-dimensional problems. If the machine crashes in a heap, you just load the database again from your regular data-warehousing cluster. You still have all the redundant power etc, as having MRP down costs megadollars/hour, but these machines typically aren't running record keeping applications that you can't afford to lose the dataset. Even in the event that they were, data modifications are generally a small percentage of total external IO, so replicating the entire update log to another smaller machine consumes minimal resources.

      You just replay the update log each time the server boots.

  15. Obligatory by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    Now if we just put a few of those in a beowolf cluster...

  16. Of course it's faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oracle is closed source and developed by professionals. Take a hint, MySQL.

    1. Re:Of course it's faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      er, MySQL is part of Oracle these days

  17. 384 CPUs equal to ...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it 4 or 8 i7s?

    1. Re:384 CPUs equal to ...? by robthebloke · · Score: 1

      = the GPU on an AMD A10

  18. MonetDB/X100 and Vectorwise by Skinkie · · Score: 2

    Columnstore databases such as MonetDB and their commercial spinoff Vectorwise (now Actian) already showed this can be achieved with open source and proprietary code.

    --
    Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
  19. Did something a LOT like this in 1996 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com & it placed as a finalist 2 yrs. in a row @ MS TechEd 2000-2002 in its hardest category: SQLServer Performance Enhancement (by placing the db devices & tables (temp too)) into RAM via the SuperDisk II program (which I also increased SuperCache II's effectiveness by up to 40% for also) & it also reviewed VERY POSITIVELY in Windows IT Pro magazine that same 1st year 1996 (then Windows NT Magazine) - & yes, for performance of course, it works!

    * Pretty much "goes without saying" that IF/WHEN you avoid diskbound latencies, you're going to speed up!

    (Is THIS precisely the same? Not quite - they're distributing the data across diff. systems from what I read/iirc, & eliminating indexing - which is the ONLY part I question here...)

    APK

    P.S.=> "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9 ...

    ... apk

    1. Re:Did something a LOT like this in 1996 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, APK, remember to save this as a reference to "prior art" when Oracle wants to patent their idea.

    2. Re:Did something a LOT like this in 1996 by Virtucon · · Score: 1

      IBM had something like this in Mainframes back in the 80s with DB2 and Hyperspaces. Back then I recall management wondering what they'd do with it.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  20. "There's very little original thought..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I state that since Mr. John Enck & I BOTH came up with the idea independently, specifically for DB work, & posted it to their "FAQ" section of the EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com website in fact - I was doing that type of thing with DBase III temp/scratch tables way, Way, WAY before it also albeit native ramdisk softwares (DOS usually) -> http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/superspeed/ScReadMe41.txt

    (Hence the biblical chapter/verse quote I closed off the post you just replied to, since imo, it too "holds true" here)

    I suspect not ONLY for Oracle doing pretty much what I did, but very possibly OTHERS DOING IT BEFORE MYSELF doing it too!

    HOW/WHY?

    Heck: Since I am FAIRLY certain I was "no 1st" here because it's SO DAMNED OBVIOUS to do for performance purposes per less latencies in RAM vs. being diskbound... (but, you never know!).

    ---

    * I do, however, also see a LOT of usage of in-memory DB tech, Virtual Machine, Terminal Server applications the past 1/2 decade now in "industry" via SSD usage, which amounts to damn near the SAME thing too - & it seems the "youth of today" have stumbled upon it, finally, lol!

    (Which is yet later another way I applied this, not with software ramdisks in software this time, but later, in hardware via CENATEK's "RocketDrive" PC-133 SDRAM 4gb/16gb PCI 2.2 bus striped-spanned hardware ramdrive cards, & later still doing the same with Gigabyte IRAM 4gb/16gb striped-spanned DDR-2 RAM SATA II bus PCI Express based ramdrive boards - this idea/technique's "taken off" most recently though on the areas noted, using FLASH based SSD's... the only REAL difference, but the principals are the same - albeit FASTER in system memory though using ramdrive softwares!).

    ---

    Thus - I really don't *THINK* Oracle CAN patent this technique to be quite honest... why? Well, what the "artsy/fartsy" people are wont to state, in "It's been done..."

    ---

    Heh - This ALL reminds me of the "Outer Limits" episode "The FINAL exam" - when Seth the main character says:

    "When a Science is ready? It can't help but make the next discovery ..."

    APK

    P.S.=> Bottom-Line: Yes - I'd be VERY surprised if my idea came before anyone else on this note on the entire planet & mainly, since BOTH myself + Mr. Enck (technical editor for Windows IT Pro/Windows NT mag) both put it up on their website as a technique for superior performance purposes (albeit I had been applying it & told the folks @ EEC/SuperSpeed to do so too, on paid contract, while increasing SuperCache I/II's efficacy by up to 40% in code too)... apk

  21. I'll have one someday. by eclectro · · Score: 1

    Ellison followed up with the introduction of Oracle's new M6-32 'Big Memory Machine,' touted to be the fastest in-memory machine in the world, hosting 32 terabytes of DRAM memory and up to 384 processor cores with 8-threads per core."

    This should be on my desk in about 4 years.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  22. Okay, fast database - high transaction rate, BUT by new+death+barbie · · Score: 0

    ...how do you replicate this to an offsite hot standby, so that you don't look stupid when the power goes out? Or whatever other disaster occurs, because you just KNOW a single basket full of this many eggs is going to attract tornadoes, Cat 5 hurricanes, earthquakes, and meteors. Also coffee spills, hungry rodents, and burst pipes.

    Also I believe OTLP == Oracle Typical Ludicrous Pricing

    --

    It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.

  23. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  24. i remember using 10g express by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for a university database class. Oracle automatically started when windows XP loaded. 10g used about 200 MB of RAM. back then i only had like 512 MB of RAM. wow. Hey, this was in 2007. lol it will be interesting to see how the new in-memory option runs on fast computers with lots of RAM and a 64 bit operating system

  25. MEMSql??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is this going to be different from MemSQL? http://www.memsql.com/

  26. But cost... by guruevi · · Score: 1

    So a 32GB RAM stick costs ~$1000. 32TB of RAM would cost $1,024,000. Given that RAM is about 1/4 of typical system build costs. This system costs about $4M raw. Oracle's markup is easily 1000% so $40M for this beast. And then the yearly licensing cost for Oracle at $2500/core: ~$1M.

    At that cost you could probably develop your own MemCache/BDB cluster.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    1. Re:But cost... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Cheapest 8GB (2x4GB) RAM on Amazon is $28. If you were to build a system at scale, 1024 x 4 x 28 = $1,14,688 = $0.1m ... +1 on the way to scale is not Oracle.

    2. Re:But cost... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At that cost you could probably develop your own MemCache/BDB cluster.

      And the performance would blow compared to this machine. Tell me how you will develop a machine with over 1Tbyte/sec full-system interconnect, as this machine has? Infiniband maxes out at 56Gbit/sec, which is more like 4GByte/sec in real performance, and has much higher latency than UltraSPARC M6's cache-coherent interconnect. Intel maxes out at 10 core, 4 socket machines, and 1TB of RAM. Current IBM POWER8 machines have half the memory and bandwidth of this machine.

      Yea, there are applications where a cheap memcache cluster over GigE will work just as well, and there are many more applications where bandwidth and latency actually matter. Do you know what MRP is? Do you know what linear programming is? Every year we buy a bigger box to run MRP, you can't refactor MRP to run on a slow-interconnect cluster, it's one of those hard algorithms that you only win by having low latency and high bandwidth, like you get with this machine or the similar, but slower IBM POWER 575.

      To put it another way, the interconnect bandwidth of this machine is 10k times faster than GigE used in most memcache clusters, which is similar to the difference between GigE and ISDN. I hope you can see why you wouldn't build a cluster with ISDN. For the same reason, applications this machine was designed won't run on a GigE cluster. There are similar scale differences in latency.

      It costs lots of money, yea, but not as much money as running MRP in seconds rather than days save. Quicker MRP directly translates into lower prices and shorter lead times, and we'll gladly pay for this type of hardware for the money it saves.

      Oh, and BTW, we run PostgreSQL on big boxes like this (though Linux on POWER currently), so you can forget the Oracle licensing.

  27. Oracle M6-96 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oracle will soon release the M6-96 server. That is three such M6-32 servers connected to a huge 96-socket server, with 96TB RAM and 9.216 threads. It will use the "Bixby" interconnect to do this. Then you can run huge databases from RAM. 96TB is a lot. Solaris 11 had to be rewritten to be able to scale to 100s of TB of RAM. No other OS can handle such amounts of RAM.

    The Linux servers such as SGI Altix or SGI UV1000, might have 1000s of cores, even 10.000s of cores, but they are clusters. For instance, the ScaleMP Linux server has several 10.000s of cores and 64TB RAM, running a single Linux kernel image. But it uses a software hypervisor to trick Linux kernel into believing it is running on a single server. But it is a cluster, google for more information. This Oracle M6-32 is a single server. Not many small nodes.

    1. Re:Oracle M6-96 by greg1104 · · Score: 1

      Let's say you're actually deploying this system to full effectiveness, where you're using 96TB of RAM and depending on the speed increase that gives you. You are going to be so screwed if you ever reboot that thing. Cache refill after restart is a huge headache even on systems with 96 GB of RAM. If one of these monster servers goes down, I could see it taking a good chunk of a day to read everything back into cache again--during which the server is running at a tiny fraction of its regular rate.

  28. The 1980's called (ram-disc) by triffid_98 · · Score: 1

    So...in memory database = a fancy new term for a database that's (essentially) loaded onto a giant ram-disc?

    As an added bonus I'm pretty sure that option would save you a mint in licensing fees.

  29. pile of batteries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Half the system cost is batteries to prevent total data loss t thge first power glitch.

  30. I believe & why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Per my other reply (& biblical chapter/verse + "the Outer Limits" quotes there too) -> http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4250479&cid=44923331 - I was doing stuff LIKE this (very like it) even on DOS + ramdrives in software even using DBase III (for temp/scratch space ops & indexing).

    * "WoW", now specifically on what YOU said - "That's mgt. for ya!" or, rather, mgt. that has NO CLASSICAL CS TRAINING!

    (Or could be that when many, especially EARLY ON in the art & science of computing (moreso than now, but it's STILL a PROBLEM imo) didn't possess formal CS training & when MOST mgt. never even DID THE WORK of their subordinates in computing ("hands-on in the trenches" to give them perspective + experience...))

    ---

    Doesn't surprise me, but... then again, it does - I mean, honestly: How could one NOT see/realize it?

    (Seriously - Even in theory alone!)

    Imo - the performance boosts are SELF-EXPLANATORY + SELF-EVIDENT, For Pete's sake, when driven from a faster media (pure electrical vs. mechanical latencies improvements) & common-sense... same reasons (almost) why a std. Mustang V-8 4.6L isn't faster than it's "big bro" GT500 (supercharged).

    ---

    In fact - What you state's ALMOST like XEROX not realizing their GUI interfaces were going to be BIG (which Apple & MS "stole" & made fortunes from is much the same here...)

    ---

    Currently - Here's how I use & apply "True SSD's" (not FLASH based) @ home even:

    I move the following off my wd Velociraptor SATA II 10,000 rpm 16mb buffered harddisks that are driven off a Promise Ex-8350 128mb ECC ram caching raid sata 1/2 controller (which defers/delays writes via said cache, & also lessens physical head movement on disks & this is where I am going to make it even faster via lessening its workloads, read on & reduces fragmentation as well in the same stroke - "bonus") onto my 4gb DDR2 Gigabyte IRAM PCIExpress ramdisk card 2006-present (& before it, a CENATEK "RocketDrive" 4gb PC-133 SDRAM based one on PCI 2.2 bus circa 2002-2006):

    ---

    A.) Pagefile.sys (partition #1 1gb size, rest is on 3gb partition next - this I didn't do on software ramdrives though)
    B.) OS & App level logging (EventLogs + App Logging)
    C.) WebBrowser caches, histories, sessions & browsers too
    D.) Print Spooling
    E.) %Temp% ops (OS & user level temp ops environmental variable values alterations)
    F.) %Tmp% ops (OS & user level temp ops environmental variable values alterations)
    G.) %Comspec% (command interpreter location, cmd.exe in this case, & in DOS/Win9x years before, command.com also)
    H.) Lastly - I also place my custom hosts file onto it, via redirecting where it's referenced by the OS, here in the registry (for performance AND security):

    HKLM\system\CurrentControlSet\services\Tcpip\Parameters

    (Specifically altering the "DataBasePath" parameter there which also acts more-or-less, like a *NIX shadow password system also!)

    ---

    * All of which lessen the amount of work my "main" OS & programs slower mechanical hard disks have to do, "speeding them up" by lessening their workload, fragmentation, and speeding up access/seek latency for the things in the list above too.

    (Thus - HDD's concentrate on program &/or data fetches that are still hdd bound (& not kernelmode diskcaching subsystem cached in 4gb of DDR3 system ram here either yet) done on a media that has no heads to move, & thus, more mechanical latency + slower seek/access as you get on hard disks + reduced filesystem fragmentations due to that all, also & it works, for BETTER/SUPERIOR overall performance even for HOME stuff!).

    ---

    MS' "ReadyBoost" isn't THAT much different either when you come right down to it, vs. that technique of mine, on the software

  31. Fixed the damn PL/SQL language already! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's still a product living in the 1970s. No decent debugger (don't even mention SQL developer or Toad as I am using both), and whenever my huge Oracle stored procedure erred, I still couldn't correctly pin-point the line number where the error occurred due to the comment lines screwing the output.