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Blog on Sqlstream.com |
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Tuesday, 14 August 2007 |
Tom Tuduc- Data Mining, Web Strategy, Risk & Decision Analysis, Influence Diargram, Web 2.0, Health Care
SQLstream.com
is about to come online (under construction). Its patented technology
originates from the research work at
Stanford
and Berkeley (Probabilistic Complex Event Processing) - Coral8's technology is based on the same, and to certain extent, Streambase. It seems that SQLstream's focus is on real time integration
versus Coral8’s focus is on dashboard, i.e. high transaction
loads, hundreds of collection points. At this point, Sqlstream's
interests include financial and telcom sectors.
Technical Highlights:
- SQLstream messaging is modeled after Java’s JMS and use
java for plugins development.
- IMB eclipse development environment is used.
- Push focus.
- Very small footprint streams
The technical difference between Sqlstream and Coral8
is java vs. c++.
So their main competitor for Sqlstream is Streambase , which is also a
java based CEP solution.
To the end-users, i.e. financial sector, java vs c++ is only a
technical and minor issue - mostly matter to developers and not
end-users. The whole point of SOA and XML is to enable developer to
develop in any language (nice theory, but not completely
true). However, with CEP using a SQL stream, it can integrate
any kind of applications, in any language, as long as they talk with
the DBMS, i.e. Oracle. Thus their pitch is focused on
integration - which is really catchy - Integration is already one of
the biggest IT market, over $50 billion a year pervasive in every
single industry. Dashboard and PKIs are more valuable if they can show
an integrated view of the enterprise. It depends on who is buying. A
committee with end-users, or the CTO and developers.
What about 2nd order predicate calculus extension (i.e. Prolog is one
of the well known 2nd order language)? Sqlstream can derive ancestral
streams, however, a true 2nd order logic is not there. Webarches
predicts that it is between one and two order of magnitude of
improvement in functionality and event definitions.
2nd order simply means that instead of binding a variable x to a value,
i.e. integer, as in first order calculus, in 2nd order, x can be binded
to an expression, i.e. (x greater than 4) or (y smaller than -1). Since
relational databases are first order predicate calculus, it seems that
a natural evolution of SQL is 2nd order. This is partially done by
PROLOG. Prolog, however, is not a production language at this point,
only for research, i.e. you set a goal, and the system will find facts
to realize the goal.
There is no 2nd order predicate calculus in SQLstream, although there
are some specific bindings, for example, if A is the parent of B, and B
is the parent of C, the SQLstream can deduce A is the ancestor of C.
Sqlstream is at the frontier of application and data integration,
messaging, middleware, and real-time response. It remains to
be seen as to how SQLstream plays with the proliferation of XML, XSLT,
Xquery, and other XML technologies as these are not SQL based. For
example, storing an XML document as a value in a field in a table is
not ideal and scalable.
However, data and/or application integration is just the beginning.
Perhaps Sqlstream is focusing on realtime integration of financial
transactions, i.e. buying and selling of options in a window of time,
i.e. if a price goes to a certain number, then exercise the option.
Integration is a step in the door in the financial sector these days.
Here, the key requirements are:
- How fast and how much data can the CEP engine process, response time,
and level of complexity, i.e. 250,000 messages/sec or subs-second
response time - with backup benchmarks.
- How easy and flexible is it to model complex queries, algorithms,
correlating both live and stored data, from many sources.
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