EXASolution
Date:
By: Philip Howard
Classification: InDetail
EXASolution, from EXASOL, is a massively parallel database management system especially developed for data warehousing applications, which is available as a software-only solution or as a pre-configured appliance running on commodity hardware such as Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Supermicro or Hitachi servers.
As of the time of writing, EXASolution holds the performance records for the TPC-H benchmark at the 100Gb, 300Gb, 1Tb and 3Tb levels and it has customers with raw data capacities considerably in excess of these figures.
The scalability of EXASolution is dependent on memory rather than disk capacity because the product makes extensive use of in-memory processing. The company has successfully tested warehouses with up to 5Tb of memory, which should equate to as much as 50Tb of raw data, depending on usage. EXASOL has decided to concentrate on small and medium-sized deployments for the present; that is, on companies in the SME market or departmental solutions within larger organisations.
The other important aspect of scalability is the number of users that can be supported. In practice, the company