IBM Informix Warehouse Accelerator

BM offers various editions of Informix that are based on the Informix Warehouse Accelerator. This is an extension to the normal database used for transactional purposes. Typically, the Warehouse Accelerator will be implemented on the same system as the relevant transactional environment with analytic data processed in its own memory space so that there is on conflict with operational aspects of the environment – transactional performance should not be impacted.

A major feature of Informix is that it natively supports time series, which both minimises space when you need to store data with time stamps and improves performance. We should state that we know of no other transactional database that has this support. Also pertinent is that Informix has native geospatial capabilities.

Informix has been focused on the VAR and ISV market by IBM and the Warehouse Accelerator will allow partners to extend their existing applications built on top of Informix and to introduce new operational analytic capabilities for their clients. In terms of direct sales, however, IBM is targeting smart metering (and therefore utilities and energy companies) with the Informix Warehouse Editions. This application has both operational and analytic requirements. In the former case, for example, you need to recognise outages and handle them in a timely manner, while in the latter case you need analytics for planning purposes (for example, at what times of day do we need to ramp up power production), marketing (what incentives can we provide for more efficient use of resources) and fraud detection, to quote just some examples.

The company targets telecommunications, public sector and retail as sectors in addition to smart metering. It is also examining which markets might be most suitable to use Informix’s geospatial capabilities both as a stand-alone feature and in conjunction with time stamps.

While Informix has customers numbered in the tens of thousands and there are many Informix customer references on the IBM web site (the most recent being Cisco) these are predominantly for Informix per se rather than the Warehouse Accelerator and those that we do know of in this category do not want their names publicise

The Informix Warehouse Accelerator enables dynamic query processing in-memory; together with parallel vector processing and advanced compression techniques; along with a column-based approach to avoid any requirement for indexes, temporary space, summary tables or partitions. In other words it is entirely suitable for supporting analytic applications because the lack of the features mentioned means that administration is both minimised and consistent across transactional and analytic environments.

Typically, the Warehouse Accelerator will be implemented on the same system as the relevant transactional environment. When this is the case you use Smart Analytics Studio, which is a graphical development tool, to define the data (and its schema) that you want to query and the Warehouse Accelerator will automatically offload this data, which is now stored separately from the OLTP environment. It is processed in its own memory space so that there is no conflict with the operational aspects of the environment and transactional performance will not be impacted. Note that there is no need to change your existing business intelligence tool(s).

The optimiser has been specifically designed to support both transactional and analytic workloads when a hybrid environment is being deployed. The optimiser knows what data is in the data mart and what is not: it will determine whether the query can be satisfied by the Accelerator and, if so, it routes the query there. If not, it will choose to execute the query within Informix. Now, if a query saves the result into a temporary table as part of the Select statement, as is often done by certain BI tools, then the Accelerator can speed up that portion of the query.

The smart metering market, at which the Informix Warehouse Editions are mainly aimed, is still in its very early stages. However, whether it is for smart metering or not the ability that Informix offers, to perform serious analytics on the same platform as transactional functions, is a strong one. The way that the system has been designed is not simply as one system for two different functions – which we do not regard as ideal – but, effectively, as two different systems on the same box and with the same administration; both linked by some clever software and purpose-built optimiser functions. Thus from a theoretical point of view, Informix has every chance of success within its target market. The danger is that while IBM has recently ramped up its development and marketing of Informix, this may not last if returns are not seen in the short to medium term. Informix is very much IBM’s third database, after DB2 and Netezza, and it is important that momentum is maintained.

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