VoltDB Blog » Mike Stonebraker http://blog.voltdb.com VoltDB Blog Tue, 07 May 2013 21:53:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 To Flash or Not to Flash: That is the Question http://blog.voltdb.com/to-flash-or-not-to-flash-that-is-the-question/ http://blog.voltdb.com/to-flash-or-not-to-flash-that-is-the-question/#comments Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:46:53 +0000 Mike Stonebraker http://newblog.voltdb.com/?p=80 I am often asked about the value of flash memory in OLTP database applications.  This blog post discusses flash technology in this context.  First, I discuss the future of flash in general; then I turn to flash (and other future storage technologies) in the context of a main memory DBMS, such as VoltDB.

The Future of Flash

Flash memory is clearly a “moving window”, since its price and performance are changing quickly.  Historically, flash could only be written a few thousand times, before it would “wear out” and have to be replaced.  This drawback seems to have been eliminated … Read more

]]> http://blog.voltdb.com/to-flash-or-not-to-flash-that-is-the-question/feed/ 0 OLTP and Decision Support http://blog.voltdb.com/oltp-and-decision-support/ http://blog.voltdb.com/oltp-and-decision-support/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 14:29:47 +0000 Mike Stonebraker http://newblog.voltdb.com/?p=62 The purpose of this blog posting is to discuss strategies for handling decision support queries in Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications.  First, I want to talk about the two classes of OLTP applications that I see in the marketplace.

The first is the traditional OLTP market that has been present for years, and is typified by purchasing Wall Street stocks.  A collection of humans (stock brokers or end-users over the web) interact with an OLTP system to trade securities.  The brokerage house (and end users for that matter) also want to run decision support queries to learn about historical trends … Read more

]]> http://blog.voltdb.com/oltp-and-decision-support/feed/ 1 Q&A from March 21 Webinar http://blog.voltdb.com/qa-march-21-webinar/ http://blog.voltdb.com/qa-march-21-webinar/#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:39:02 +0000 Mike Stonebraker http://newblog.voltdb.com/?p=28 Last week I gave a webinar entitled OldSQL vs. NoSQL vs. NewSQL for New OLTP.  If you missed the live webinar and want to view the recorded version, you’ll find it here (you may need to scroll down to find it).  Below is a list of questions that live webinar attendees asked, in no particular order.  If you have follow-on questions, reply to this post and I or someone else from VoltDB will answer them.<--break->

Webinar Questions and Answers

1.  Does VoltDB run on Scale up NUMA like systems or is it designed primarily to run on scale out clusters?… Read more

]]> http://blog.voltdb.com/qa-march-21-webinar/feed/ 0 Use Main Memory for OLTP http://blog.voltdb.com/use-main-memory-oltp/ http://blog.voltdb.com/use-main-memory-oltp/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:31:59 +0000 Mike Stonebraker http://newblog.voltdb.com/?p=21 This is the first in a series of blog posts in which I will explore various aspects of On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP).   In this post, I’ll examine main memory storage as an alternative to disk for traditional and “New OLTP” systems.

Traditional relational DBMSs, Hadoop and most of the NoSQL offerings store their data on disk.  In contrast, VoltDB is a main memory DBMS.

First, it should be noted that main memory is getting very cheap.  It is straightforward to put 50 Gbytes of memory on a $5,000 server.  Beefy servers these days have 10 times that amount. Moreover, many … Read more

]]> http://blog.voltdb.com/use-main-memory-oltp/feed/ 0 Clarifications on the CAP Theorem and Data-Related Errors http://blog.voltdb.com/clarifications-cap-theorem-and-data-related-errors/ http://blog.voltdb.com/clarifications-cap-theorem-and-data-related-errors/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:48:38 +0000 Mike Stonebraker http://newblog.voltdb.com/?p=243
There has been another round of online conversations about the CAP theorem as the internet community continues to discuss its implications on networked databases.   Coda Hale recently wrote a well received article titled, “You Can’t Sacrifice Partition Tolerance”, acknowledged as “pretty good” by Eric Brewer.  Coda refers extensively to the CAP paper by Gilbert and Lynch.

Scattered in the larger conversation is a continued mis-perception of my position regarding the CAP theorem. Coda writes “Michael Stonebraker’s assertion aside, partitions (read: failures) do happen.” Others have made similar comments, so let me set the record straight.

I have consistently … Read more

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