Sunday, October 02, 2005

Database Technology camps

Mainstream Relational Database technology is split into two camps.

On the one hand are the systems that are directly or indirectly based upon techniques and algorithms derived from IBM's System R project. Most published research also falls into this group.

In the second camp are systems that have been inspired by Oracle. Oracle has a very interesting history. Although Oracle started with the specifications of System R, it actually did not use any of the System R ideas. A good summary of how Oracle evolved can be found here.

SimpleDBM is based upon the System R heritage. The main reason for this is that I do not work in a company that makes DBMSes. Hence I do not have access to information other than published research. Since Oracle does not publish details of its algorithms, it would be much harder for me to implement a system based upon Oracle. I have, however, given much thought to some of the techniques used in Oracle, and hope to discuss some of these in future blogs and papers.

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