DB/Reporting Tools

[Richard Gaskin]

Mike Kerner wrote:
> As you can see from Lynn and Ruslan's posting of the conversation
> they were having with me off-list, they think there should be no
> other tool.  We'll see.

Well, obviously as the makers of Valentina they're biased, but IMO their 
craftsman's pride is quite understandable:

Not only is the feature set quite enticing (hence this discussion of 
reporting tools), but one thing they don't drive home as much as I 
believe it warrants is the unusual structure of their data store.

While most stores are row-based, my understanding is that Valentina is 
column-based.  Columnar stores often carry a bit of overhead for writes, 
but Ruslan's done such a good job with his that you'd never notice.

Where columnar stores shine is in retrieval, specifically in searches.

In a very broad sense, it's almost like having every column 
automatically indexed, but without the overhead normally associated with 
things like SQL indexes.

What Ruslan's pulled off with Valentina is IMNSHO quite remarkable, esp. 
for use cases where search performance across multiple fields in large 
data sets is critical.

Valentina may not be the best tool for every job, and I think even Lynn 
would be quick to agree with that.  But it's an innovative option 
uniquely well suited for certain tasks, so I can't blame them if they're 
excited about what they've accomplished.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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