STORAGE

McObject eXtremeDB 5.0 Delivers Improvements in Clustering, Speed

Written by: Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor
Category: STORAGE

Responding to strong demand for its clustering database technology, McObject has released eXtremeDB 5.0, the latest upgrade of its embedded database system, with new features that make eXtremeDB’s clustering faster and more flexible, and further simplify its administration. Additional improvements in version 5.0 accelerate performance across the eXtremeDB product family – including in its high availability, in-memory database system (IMDS), 64-bit and other editions – and provide new tools to make application development faster and easier.

 
“McObject is pleased to see many customers moving forward with projects incorporating eXtremeDB Cluster, in fields ranging from aerospace/defense to smart grid management and financial systems. In eXtremeDB 5.0, McObject refines its clustering database technology, delivering several key improvements that enable it to address an even wider range of real-time computing challenges,” McObject CEO Steve Graves said. New features in eXtremeDB Cluster 5.0 include:
  • A local tables option that exempts specified eXtremeDB Cluster tables from cluster-wide replication, to accelerate processing at   the local node. Local tables are shareable, when desired, through a   scatter/gather mechanism
  • Dynamic clustering, which enables nodes to join and leave clusters without interrupting processing. This further simplifies administration for a clustering database technology that counts minimal run-time maintenance as a defining characteristic
  • Support for Infiniband switched fabric interconnect. Infiniband reduces communication latency between eXtremeDB Cluster nodes and improve throughput and scalability
  • Support for the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, which increases messaging efficiency for parallel processing on   distributed-memory systems (i.e. clusters) to deliver higher speed and scalability. Open and widely-used, MPI provides the additional benefits of developer familiarity and more portable code
In McObject’s tests, eXtremeDB Cluster using Infiniband and MPI performed more than 7.5x faster than the same system implemented with “plain vanilla” gigabit networking (TCP/IP and Ethernet). MPI can also be used over Ethernet-TCP, and in McObject’s tests this combination performed almost 1.5x faster than using TCP/IP over Ethernet. eXtremeDB Cluster’s Infiniband and MPI support is provided on Linux in the current release.
 
Other new features in version 5.0 reduce DBMS latency, and improve developer efficiency, in all eXtremeDB editions. Newly supported NUMERIC and DECIMAL data types provide more precise calculations than alternative FLOAT and DOUBLE types. By permitting integer operations, NUMERIC and DECIMAL data types enable faster performance while also allowing the database designer to specify the exact scale and precision required.
 
eXtremeDB 5.0 also adds support for nullable data types, or the ability to set data types to the special value NULL. This provides greater flexibility in representing missing or inapplicable information in query results. eXtremeDB’s NULL value support extends to both its SQL and native C/C++, Java and .NET application programming interfaces (APIs).
 
For the growing community of developers using eXtremeDB with the Java and .NET languages, version 5.0 adds features that increase flexibility, programming efficiency and performance. These include:
  • .NET and Java class generators. eXtremeDB’s database   schema compiler, mcocomp, can now process database definition language (DDL) files (database schemas) written in the DBMS’s native language, and output code defining the equivalent .java and .cs classes. This is a boon when adding Java or .NET front-ends to existing eXtremeDB databases that are defined in the native DDL
  • Confirmed interoperability with JamaicaVM, a hard   real-time Java run-time environment provided by aicas GmbH. JamaicaVM offers fully deterministic garbage collection and is optimized for critical systems such as controls and visualization
  • Compatibility of eXtremeDB’s Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API with JDK 7
Version 5.0 also improves eXtremeDB High Availability, McObject’s DBMS edition that implements master-replica database replication and serves as the basis of many fault-tolerant systems. eXtremeDB 5.0 adds High Availability functions that improve an application’s ability to control failover to a replica, by providing greater control to the replica over closing the communication channel to the master.