OOooohhhhh, how COOL!......Objectivity is neither Oracle nor SS....
is it ( gasp ) "federated" in any sense?
Can you tell us more? This is interesting......
-----Original Message-----
From: MacGregor, Ian A. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 8:20 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: OT - WHAT is a FEDERATED DATABASE ???
We have a 175 terabyte database in Objectivity. It houses event data from a physics experiments looking at the decay of B-mesons and their antimatter counterparts, trying to find out what's going on with CP violation.
Ian MacGregor
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 4:56 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Ross, glad to see you're starting to come up to speed here. :>)
> But for the clustering to work, businesses would have to change software
> and segment the data
The CNet authors obviously got tangled up in their notes and didn't
understand what they were writing about. (Not a first.) You don't have to
"segment the data" in OPS- that's the "federated database" scene where you
place different tables for the same database app on different servers. If
you segment an enterprise package like SAP or Oracle ERP then you have
1000's of tables to deal with. Chances are, no matter how "intelligently"
you segment your data, just losing any random machine, and its attendant
subset of tables, will bring the application to a halt and no more
transactions will be possible even though the database is still "up." That's
a single point a failure and that's the real problem. And to add a machine
to the federated cluster you still have to re-segment the data. I don't
believe the good folks at Dell have architected a federated database like
Microsoft did for the TPC.
Here's a challenge... Does anyone know of ANY enterprise ERP type package or
any other application where the software vendor supports a "federated"
architecture? If not then it's likely no one will ever experience the
performance seen in the TPC-C benchmarks by Microsoft. If no real world apps
support a federated architecture then we may as well just ignore all those
benchmarks. And after we throw all those benchmarks out which database
engines consistently score the best on the remaining benchmarks?
Here's another challenge... Has anyone ever worked with or even know of
anyone who's worked with a federated database? While I wouldn't configure my
database exactly like Oracle configures those used for TPC benchmarking,
(turning off redo, etc.), in terms of physical design I do believe my
databases are at least somewhat similar or recognizably in the same
ballpark. I do not believe anyone comes close to configuring SQLServer's
physical layout like that used in the Microsoft benchmarks. That's the
challenge and until someone can address this challenge we should practically
ignore all TPC benchmarks produced from Microsoft's federated database
architecture. IMHO.
> the TPC is *independent*.
Yes, and it's flawed and vendors take advantage of this to dupe the
unwitting.
BTW, Oracle OPS / EMC doesn't have to be a single point of failure if you
implement the SRDF option but I've never done it so what do I know? Well
I'll answer that by saying I don't know much but I do try to keep an open
minded pursuit of the truth. Sometimes I actually succeed... I think. ;-)
Steve Orr
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 3:09 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Very Interesting! It appears Oracle 9i, is, in fact, a Hybrid Federated
Database!
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2897140.html?tag=st.ne.ni.metacomm.ni
A snippet:
"An Oracle spokeswoman said the new Oracle 9i database, due in the first
half of next year, will feature new "clustering" technology that will make
the company's databases perform faster and more reliably than before.
Clustering allows businesses to harness multiple servers to run a very large
database, allowing servers to share work or take over from each other if one
fails.
The company's previous clustering technology, called Oracle Parallel Server,
allowed businesses to add as many servers, or high-end computers, as they
needed. But for the clustering to work, businesses would have to change
software and segment the data, a time-consuming effort for database
administrators, said Jeremy Burton, Oracle's senior vice president of
products and services marketing..."
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 5:55 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
I have some answers, for the curious:
http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2623013,00.html
It appears that SS can partition data storage among multiple
machines, giving it "blow your doors off" performance.
If a machine goes ( gets dynamited at an Oracle demo, for instance)
the data goes with it.
This would be much in the same way that your data (ALL of it) would
go if you blew up the EMC/Hitachi/StorageWorks array.
Oracle Parallel Server, in contrast, has a single location for
it's data ( read: single point of failure! )
Granted, there are more failure points in a federated architecture,
but there is no such thing as a TOTAL failure ( like "site down" )
since only part of the data needs to be recovered from backup.
But, with Oracle Parallel Server, if your disk farm goes down,
you lose EVERYTHING.
I suppose if i ever need to store a Petabyte or so, I'll do it
on more than one box, for disaster recovery. So, this is the
"way around" the weakness in hardware loss for both SqlServer2K
and Oracle.
And, if I run my PByte database on SS2K, I'll get my answers alot
faster. <nudge nudge>
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 3:53 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
What's a federated database????????
We really need to understand this otherwise we'll be duped by Microsoft's
deceptive benchmark claims!!
Comparing the performance of SQLServer in a federated database configuration
to Oracle in a parallel server configuration is useless and misleading but
that's what Microsoft is doing when they tout their TPC-C benchmarks. In a
non-federated database configuration Oracle8 outperforms SQLServer handily.
Do we really want performance without fault tolerance? How well does
SQLServer perform when it's down because of its fragility? ;-/
Microsoft "shattered" the TPC-C record with the "federated database"
architecture but even a self-confessed pro-Microsoft apologist pointed out
that no one in their right mind would actually setup a production OLTP
database that way. The point of the demo at OpenWorld was to highlight the
fragility and impracticality of the federated database architecture as a
real world fault tolerant solution. The demo was quite amusing with smoke
and sound effects. While displaying transaction rates, a node in a running
cluster was "blown up" with predictable results. The transaction rate for
SQLServer went down to zero because the database was down while the Oracle
Parallel Server cluster kept on running. Of course Microsoft does not want
to see its products trashed regardless of the truth so, in an attempt to
prevent Larry from repeating this demo they sought an injunction based on
the fine print of their license agreement which says you can't run benchmark
tests without prior written approval from Microsoft. (Does anyone ever read
license agreements?)
We need a new, more fair benchmark to measure transaction rates AND fault
tolerance of a database cluster. Something like a standard 4 node cluster
and a random blow up of a node. This new benchmark would need to run a
practical, real world application and measure transaction rates before,
during and after the blow up. It would also be nice to measure the linear
scalability of adding new nodes (which is impossible under the federated
database approach without doing a complete reorg). Oh but now I'm dreaming
so it's back to reading the reviews and making decisions based on gut feel.
IMHO,
Steve Orr
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