Groovy Baby, Yeah

[Tony Bain]

(yeah, this company is going to have to get used to the Austin Powers references.)

Groovy Corp put out a press release last night that starts the official launch of their SQL Switch relational database platform.

I have been speaking with Groovy for a few months, and while the press release is a bit noisy there is actually some interesting stuff in it.

First, an overview

• They are an in memory RDBMS
• They have worked with Intel to architect from the ground up for large multi processor concurrency
• Initially they are launching as a multi-core appliance
• They claim 200,000 sql operations per second from a single box
• They are proprietary (not built on MySQL or any other open source database) which means they have had a lot of control around their architecture
• They are a pretty cool company with some interesting people

So one of their key claims to fame is they can be a lot faster & cheaper than a traditional RDBMS.* In some case significantly so, expect more on this.

But, this is only part of the story.* The bit which has been getting them traction around Silicon Valley, and has rocketed them into relevance, has been their real time focus.* They have developed a push extension to SQL where the RDBMS actually pushes data out as and when required out through the real time layers of the application stack (Ajax, XMPP etc).* This removes the need for the high volume database refreshing/polling queries, these queries currently sit under everything that calls itself “real-time” today when a RDBMS is involved.* If you want to know more about why, you may be interested in this post I wrote a little while back.

I do know that anyone who is big on the web and is focused on real time is checking them out.* While it is early days for them, I think they tick the unique and innovative boxes which are key requirements to staking some ground in the highly active database market.

I will follow with some more technical info.

UPDATE: If you are at the TechCrunch real time event today, check them out.* They are running the bar, their slogan for this is "the only thing refreshing is the beer".






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