Re: Column stores

[Luke Lonergan <llonergan(at)greenplum(dot)com>]

Ron,

On 2/1/08 11:18 PM, "Ron Mayer" <rm_pg(at)cheapcomplexdevices(dot)com> wrote:

> I thought KX System's KDB is a column-oriented database which
> had impressive reference customers (Fidelity, BofA, JPMorgan, etc)
> with their column store database since the early 90s.
> 
> But yeah - I'm curious why all the hype around new column oriented
> databases when it seems people already determined what niche
> applications they're great for quite some time ago.

Exactly.

SybaseIQ, KDB, etc have proven to have their excellent uses.  Resurrecting
the column idea and proclaiming it the solution to all DW problems is pretty
off-base IMO.  The limitations are real, that's why it's not the general
answer even to the old DW problem, much less the new one which involves much
more real time load/query and multi-user work.

The complete answer uses parallelism and processing embedded within data,
which is a much harder technology to get right.  Grafting a column store
module onto MySQL does not fix it's lack of complex query capabilities and
make it scale for DW.

- Luke