Re: Larry Ellison comments on Microsoft's benchmark

Brad wrote:
>
> What I want to know is how the system can still be reliable if one or
> more servers are down. If the data is inaccessible then how can any
> query be reliable? I can understand if there is some striping going on,
> but even then if two machines go down all of the data is not accessible.
> How can the database as a whole be worth hitting if only one of twelve
> servers is up (as Ivana claimed).

It depends how the data is distributed across the "machines" and on the type of query. A query like SELECT * FROM ACCOUNTS WHERE ACCOUNTNUM = "SHELLY100123" could return valid data as long as ACCOUNTNUM is a unique key to a table row and that table row resides entirely on working hardware. A query like SELECT * FROM ACCOUNTS WHERE AMOUNT_OWED > 100.00 will fail if at least one row of the table resides on hardware that is offline or broken. Some queries can be resolved without access to the entire data base and some cannot.

I hadn't realized this message was cross-posted to all those groups! Received on Tue Jul 11 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT