Re: Hardware for 200GB+ DB ?
Date: 19 DEC 94 14:36:14
Message-ID: <3d4nfd$1l1_at_nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
The following is a reprint of an announcement by Oracle. It deals with
very large databases and large physical memory sizes (8GB+). Please
contact Oracle for a more detailed description of the capabilities of
64bit computing and Oracle.
-Bruce-
Digital, Oracle demonstrate world's largest
64-bit relational database
Digital and Oracle Corp. today demonstrated an unprecedented
industry achievement -- the world's largest in-memory commercial
UNIX-based relational database. The demonstration, held at DECUS '94 in
Anaheim, Calif., highlights additional proof of the advantages of
64-bit computing.
The two companies showcased an 8-gigabyte in-memory Oracle database running on Digital's 64-bit Alpha computers with the DEC OSF/1 operating system. Such large in-memory databases are impossible to implement with current 32-bit systems.
This technology forms the foundation of and heralds new possibilities for those customers who need to implement next-generation applications such as decision support, data warehousing, micro marketing, real-time worldwide geographic information systems (GIS), on-line transaction processing (OLTP), and video-on-demand. These applications, many of which employ multimedia technology, are becoming increasingly popular across industries such as telecommunications, manufacturing, retail, pharmaceuticals, laboratory information management, and banking.
Initial tests indicate performance gains of 600 to 800 percent when compared to previous database technology. These gains are achieved for one-tenth the system cost when compared to traditional mainframe solutions.
The demonstration marks the first database application to fully exploit a 64-bit computing architecture and sets a 21st century computing standard with seamless integration of Oracle7 with Digital's Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP), clusters, and DEC OSF/1 operating system technologies. The result provides customers the most powerful mainframe alternative for massive Very Large Database (VLDB) applications.
"The combination of Digital's 64-bit Alpha technology and 64-bit DEC OSF/1 UNIX operating system is the main ingredient to database capacity of this magnitude," said Pauline Nist, vice president, High End Servers. "Digital's 64-bit Alpha systems have this capability today and are in full swing. IBM may have 64-bit systems in 1996, Hewlett-Packard in 1997, Sun in 1998, and Compaq might have them in 1999."
"We are very excited by this. 64-bit technology has made these results possible," said Robert Pariseau, vice president, DEC Products Division, Oracle Corp. "This means that customers can look forward to viable 64-bit, UNIX-based mainframe alternatives for large mission critical applications. Also, Oracle on DEC OSF/1 with 64-bit addressing will enhance Oracle's Media Server by enabling entire video images in memory, thus allowing simultaneous media serving to many thousands of households."
Currently, customers seeking mainframe alternatives are limited by the numbers of users, performance, and size of database that can be supported by existing 32-bit UNIX-based systems. Digital and Oracle have broken these limits with the DECUS demonstration. The delivery of this technology is one result of the more comprehensive, ongoing joint Enterprise Solutions Program (ESP) which Oracle and Digital launched in July.
Advanced technology components
This particular large scale database demonstration features the
following components: Oracle scalable, portable 64-bit database
architecture; Large System Global Areas (SGA); and Big Oracle Blocks
(BOB).
The enabling technology behind large SGAs is Digital's 64-bit
UNIX operating system, DEC OSF/1. The goal of the Oracle and Digital
large SGA project is to enhance the performance of Very Large Databases
(VLDB) and make in-memory relational databases a market reality. Large
SGAs result in an increase in database blocks cached, better cache hit
ratios, and faster I/O completion as compared to previous
implementations.
The second component for rapid disk to memory transfer, Big Oracle Blocks, allows Oracle blocks to reach up to 32KB in size. This results in more contiguous data, more rows per block, fewer chained blocks, flatter b-tree index structures, and a very high number of extents per tablespace. Received on Mon Dec 19 1994 - 14:36:14 CET