NewSQL vs NoSQL for New OLTP

NewSQL vs NoSQL for New OLTP, Michael Stonebraker, VoltDB

Historically, enterprises used traditional RDBMs for on-line transaction processing (OLTP) applications. We affectionately call these systems OldSQL, because they are largely legacy code bases, originally written decades ago. New OLTP applications have more extreme performance requirements than the Old OLTP applications of yesteryears. These are caused by web users directly submitting transactions rather than using a professional terminal operator and by mobile devices (and sensors) enabling transaction submission from many more locations. In a considerable number of modern applications (multiplayer games, risk analysis in electronic trading, gambling, social networks, etc.) OldSQL is cracking under the volume of interactions. This talk contrasts two alternatives to OldSQL in this area:

• NoSQL, where both SQL and ACID transactions are jettisoned for better performance
• NewSQL, where SQL and ACID are retained, and better performance is delivered through innovative architectures

Dr. Stonebraker has been a pioneer of database research and technology for more than a quarter of a century. He was the main architect of the INGRES relational DBMS, and the object-relational DBMS, POSTGRES. These prototypes were developed at the University of California at Berkeley where Stonebraker was a Professor of Computer Science for twenty five years. More recently at M.I.T. he was a co-architect of the Aurora/Borealis stream processing engine, the C-Store column-oriented DBMS, and the H-Store transaction processing engine. Currently, he is working on science-oriented DBMSs, OLTP DBMSs, and search engines for accessing the deep web. He is the founder of five venture-capital backed startups, which commercialized his prototypes. Presently he serves as Chief Technology Officer of VoltDB, Paradigm4, Inc. and Goby.com. Professor Stonebraker is the author of scores of research papers on database technology, operating systems and the architecture of system software services. He was awarded the ACM System Software Award in 1992, for his work on INGRES. Additionally, he was awarded the first annual Innovation award by the ACM SIGMOD special interest group in 1994, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997. He was awarded the IEEE John Von Neumann award in 2005, and is presently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at M.I.T.