database

[Ruslan Zasukhin]

On 10/24/05 5:37 PM, "xavier.bury at clearstream.com"
<xavier.bury at clearstream.com> wrote:

> Not to say Lynn is wrong but if a database is well organized in terms of
> functionality, it can beat the
> pants of a compiled database which woudl suffocate with too much
> information. 
> 
> Call it the space-folding starship...
> 
> Before valentina existed, i had to port a database from a PC to Macs for a
> professional product.
> Some 700000 records with relational links on which FileMaker just
> choked...
> 
> It took HC 3 days to import the data but after that it was 2 seconds
> access even on a CDROM...

When you say: 2 seconds access. You NEED to say for which operation.

EXACT VALUE SEARCH:         WHERE fld = 55
is 100-1000 times more easy than RANGE search  WHERE fld > 55

Even FileMaker can do EXACT search very fast. Really, this is just few steps
in the b-tree. No miracle here.

But if you do RANGE search again 2 cases:

    * few records found
    * almost all records found.

Most dbs in second case start think very long.
RANGE search is where Valentina shines.

BTW, SqlLite do not search all records never. They just search first record
which satisfy RANGE search, and stop. When you do NEXT record they do search
next one.  They can do this only because they have claim: we are single used
db. This is why it is not possible right _correct_ server around SqlLite. It
can return few correct results, but also incorrect.

> But preparing the information was paramount for this trick which we can't
> all afford... 
 
> Surely if i had Valentina then, i could have said it choked on that many
> records... ;) 

Nope. :-)
This is tiny db for Valentina. Again story which I love.

Marco did have 28 million records in table (20Gb db). Valentina did answer
in 0.2 seconds. On hardware as MAC G3 or G4 it seems.

IMHO problem will all such home-made dbs is that developer have made it to
solve his tasks in one project. HE do not care about tasks which YOU can
meet in YOUR project.

Compare, To implement SQL92 in Valentina 2 have we have spend about 3
developer-years I think.


> And any database can be tuned for optimum performance one way or
> another for specific data sets...

Let me re-arrange this:

* for ANY db it is possible to develop more optimized structure
if "to think". :-) 

* but any db have own limit of power. Like a car or airplane.

-- 
Best regards,

Ruslan Zasukhin
VP Engineering and New Technology
Paradigma Software, Inc

Valentina - Joining Worlds of Information
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

[I feel the need: the need for speed]