Re: Relational Model and Search Engines?

From: Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <leandro_at_dutra.fastmail.fm>
Date: Mon, 03 May 2004 12:19:25 -0300
Message-ID: <pan.2004.05.03.15.19.19.152989_at_dutra.fastmail.fm>


Em Sat, 01 May 2004 10:10:37 -0700, Seun Osewa escreveu:

> Do you think the relational model could efficiently be used as the basis
> of search engines such as google

        Why not?

        The relational model is purely logical. Physically the implementor is free to use whatever tricks he may wish.

> if a database engine, say mysql, were used to power a search
> engine, how much slower would it be expected to be? (5%? 50%? 90%? 100
> times slower?).

        Impossible to say. A proper RDBMS should be faster, SQL perhaps slower, MySQL certainly a catastrophe...

        ...unless MySQL is indeed being used by Google in that typical throwaway mode where each datum is replicated in countless discardable cluster node.

> Or, to make things more even, let's say we had a main
> memory SQL database?

        Main memory is just a hype word for big cache, little reliability. It is just an implementation trick that's orthogonal to the database model.

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Received on Mon May 03 2004 - 17:19:25 CEST

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