[e-lang] Stonebraker et al on the upcoming RDBMS revolution

[Dan Bornstein]

Possibly of interest:

     The End of an Architectural Era (It's Time for a Complete Rewrite)
     <http://web.mit.edu/dna/www/vldb07hstore.pdf>

Abstract included below.

-dan

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The End of an Architectural Era
(It's Time for a Complete Rewrite)

Michael Stonebraker
Samuel Madden
Daniel J. Abadi
Stavros Harizopoulos
Nabil Hachem
Pat Helland

ABSTRACT

In previous papers [SC05, SBC+07], some of us predicted the end of "one 
size fits all" as a commercial relational DBMS paradigm. These
papers presented reasons and experimental evidence that showed that the 
major RDBMS vendors can be outperformed by 1-2 orders of magnitude by 
specialized engines in the data warehouse, stream processing, text, and 
scientific database markets.

Assuming that specialized engines dominate these markets over time, the 
current relational DBMS code lines will be left with the business
data processing (OLTP) market and hybrid markets where more than one 
kind of capability is required. In this paper we show that current 
RDBMSs can be beaten by nearly two orders of magnitude in the OLTP 
market as well. The experimental evidence comes from comparing a new 
OLTP prototype, H-Store, which we have built at M.I.T., to a popular 
RDBMS on the standard transactional benchmark, TPC-C.

We conclude that the current RDBMS code lines, while attempting to be a 
"one size fits all" solution, in fact, excel at nothing. Hence, they are 
25 year old legacy code lines that should be retired in favor of a 
collection of "from scratch" specialized engines. The DBMS vendors (and 
the research community) should start with a clean sheet of paper and 
design systems for tomorrow's requirements, not continue to push code 
lines and architectures designed for yesterday's needs.