[REBOL] Re: KDB was {Re: Re: dbms3.r 0}
From: rgaither:triad:rr at: 15-Jan-2002 12:17
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the links!
I'm always looking for new DB technologies. :-)
>http://www.kx.com/developers_faq_kdb.htm
>
><quote>
>Why is Kdb so fast?
>The main reason is that Kdb tables are "inverted", i.e. the data in each
>column is stored together, instead of in the row orientation used by most
>RDBMS's. The column data is also organized for optimal processing speed.
></quote>
I remember some small personal information manager (pims) databases
being "Fully Inverted" - which I believe means every column is
automatically indexed. When the db engine is optimized for this
kind of indexing and combining result sets it can be incredibly fast.
This speed usually comes at the cost of extreemly large storage
representation though and only in the read only search operations.
The same things that make search and analysis so fast cause
updates to be very slow - needing to keep all that indexing and
duplicate data in sync. This is why it was used in pims where the
read/write ratio was heavily skewed to reading. Some of the same
techniques are applied in reporting "data cube" implementations
as well. These techniques don't work as well with online transaction
processing (OLTP) systems like those typically used in business
applications.
Thanks, Rod.
Rod Gaither
Oak Ridge, NC - USA
[rgaither--triad--rr--com]
