Getting Started with VectorWise

I've been using a very early alpha-release of VectorWise for the last
couple of weeks, and with a rumoured beta-release just around the corner
I thought I'd share some of my results.

The first thing to say about it is obvious; VectorWise is blindingly
fast. I'll have lots to say about that later but for now I'll just
mention that the smallest improvement in performance that I have seen,
compared with classic Ingres, is a factor of 12 times faster.

Amusingly this has already been a problem when demonstrating
VectorWise. At last year's UK IUA conference Bill Maimone showed an
early prototype running on his laptop, querying a 180 million row
table, and it was so fast that I am pretty sure most of the audience
didn't realize he was running a query before it was over. Jim Callaghan
compared it with the old joke about the gun-slinger with the fastest
draw in Texas. "Do you want to see it again?"

The second thing that you quicky discover is that the databases are
very compact compared with classic Ingres. You can store a lot more
data in the same space. In fact you can store so much more that some of
my current tests can't be compared with the results from classic Ingres
because I simply don't have the disk space to create a billion (that's
billion, with a "B" for bravo) row table in a classic Ingres database.

I said above that the first thing you'll notice is how fast VectorWise
is. That is literally true. Long-time Ingres users won't notice it
being installed. It just happens. The first release I got was built on
Ingres 9.4 and the install process was a wee bit ragged, but heck, it
was the first alpha-release, and I did make it extra difficult by
installing it as a peer installation with non-standard locations. The
latest release I have, which is built on Ingres 10, installs smoothly
with no fuss at all. If you didn't know it had VectorWise inside it,
you would never know it was anything different.

I am experimenting with blogging about VectorWise. I've only just
started the blog and I will probably continue to post here as well
(until someone tells me to stop). The first posting is at
http://community.ingres.com/forum/bl...ectorwise.html

--
Roy

UK Ingres User Association Conference 2010 will be on Tuesday June 8 2010
Go to http://www.iua.org.uk/join to get on the mailing list.