Reading the Cloud
February 10, 2011
At the recent New England Database Summit held at MIT, a popular topic was the cloud revolution, and pundits efforts to paint a bright color on its grayish lining.
One speaker in particular, UMass Senior Researcher Emmanuel Cecchet, introduced a “system focused on dynamic provisioning of database resources in the cloud.” Named for the now noteworthy sheep, Dolly is database platform-agnostic and uses virtualization-based replication for efficiently spawning database replicas. The research, a joint venture between Cecchet, a colleague and two graduate students, identifies flaws in the way current databases engage cloud services. The group claims their creation will correct those issues; for example, by improving efficiency in the name of metered pricing.
Another area of interest in the cloud conversation covered at the conference was the increasing strain cloud computation places on databases. James Starkey, whose solution is an SQL based relational database to share the workload among varied clouds, is a former MySQL designer and founder of NimbusDB. Some interesting choices for new terms are tossed out there, all of which can be found in the linked presentation.
While versions from both presenters have been prepared for release, no date has been set, leaving the industry and users alike to speculate on the success of these endeavors. We’ve got the hype, now we just need the technology to back it up. Amazon is taking Oracle to the cloud. Salesforce is moving with Database.com. There is progress. Let’s hope that database Dolly is more robust than cloned Dolly.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2011
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