Device Revs Up Databases

Device Revs Up Databases

Written By
Paula Musich
Paula Musich
Nov 18, 2002
2 minute read
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Israeli database accelerator startup InfoCyclone Ltd. last week at OracleWorld, in San Francisco, spotlighted its flagship appliance designed to boost database performance without costly database server upgrades.

The InfoCyclone acceleration appliance, installed between the application servers and database servers, monitors and analyzes SQL query traffic, identifies the most problematic queries, and executes those queries in its faster, read-only database engine.

The database accelerator is intended to automatically offload read-only query processing from the main database, providing a more efficient mechanism to execute such queries. The benefit for IT is that it can eliminate the need for expensive hardware upgrades or fine-tuning of databases when performance degrades and affects business performance, according to Haim Kopans, executive vice president of product management and technology at InfoCyclone, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

“You dont need to buy more licenses or upgrade hardware. You can just plug in the appliance. We take commonly accessed data, load it into the appliance and hold it in main memory. We monitor traffic going to the database, and if we see a query that accesses that data, we trap the SQL statement and direct it to the appliance,” said Kopans, who estimated that the appliance can process queries up to 10 times faster than the database.

Inside InfoCyclone

The appliance speeds database operations by:

  • Learning and adapting Dynamically identifies database “hot spots”
  • Moving data Uploads databases hot spots into main memory
  • Incorporating SQL engine Executes queries on in-memory data

Kopans said the appliance not only speeds the execution of common queries but also improves database performance for all other activities.

Although the InfoCyclone database accelerator competes with technology from Appfluent Technology Inc., it brings new capabilities to market, said analyst Kevin Strange, at Gartner Inc., in San Jose, Calif.

The appliance runs on IBM xServers and Hewlett-Packard Co. ProLiant servers with 4GB to 16GB of memory. InfoCyclone also plans to port its software to Intel Corp. Itanium 64-bit processors. Prices for the appliance, due in April, will start at $50,000.

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