Oracle gives apps a ticket to ride on Sparc M7's SQL warp drives

Oracle will today release, in its words, "a free and open API and developer kit" for the hardware-accelerated SQL-crunching engines in its Sparc M7 processors. You can register to grab the goodies, here. "We're opening up the interfaces to enable programmers using C/C++, Java and Python to effectively use these accelerators," …

[Stevie]

Bah!

What a shame this didn't arrive a year ago when we were looking at going the Netezza route.

Then again, if Oracle had been more forthcoming about the strategic future of Sparc and Solaris in the first six months after the acquisition we wouldn't have IBM power 7xx stacks towering over a room full of sun gear.

Foot, shotgun.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bah!

Too bad you didn't see Oracle's 5-year SPARC roadmap either. I believe it came out right about 6-months after the acquisition. Oracle recently updated it for another 5-years last year or so. http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/oracle-sparc/sparc-roadmap-slide-2076743.pdf

But if you're running Power7xx systems, you're probably paying some extreme support/maintenance costs for those aging systems and could probably save quite a bit migrating to new SPARC M7 systems. Oracle even has an AIX to Solaris Migration Factory http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/hardware-solutions/ibm-aix-migration-2124022.html

[chasil]

Re: Bah!

It might be DB2 UDB running on those power systems with oracle-compatibility turned on. I've always wanted to try that; I've wondered how deep the EnterpriseDB code is for that.

[Down not across]

No free lunch

Don't forget this information must be stored in compressed in-memory columnar database format; you gotta work for your acceleration.

I guess the cost of In-Memory is enough that its worth giving the APIs for free to flog few more M7 systems.