(2007-07-12) Stonebraker Interview

Werner Vogels points to an interview with Michael Stonebraker. Among other things, he talks about the weakness of SQL compared to the true Relational Data Base model, and the failure of the Object Data Base vendors to get market success.

• There are at least a half dozen or so vertical markets in which the one-size-fits-all technology can be beaten by one to two orders of magnitude.

• Why did OO (object oriented) databases (Object Data Base-s) fail? In my opinion the problem with the OO guys is that they were fundamentally architecting a system that was oriented toward the needs of mechanical and electronic CAD. The trouble is, the CAD market didn't salute their systems. (then gives detailed reasons why) They failed because the primary Market they were going after didn't want them.

• (interesting section about financial traders worrying about sub-millisecond latency - leading to Embedded Data Base, and traders locating their systems next to the exchanges)

• In Data Warehouse-s, 100% of the data warehouses I've seen are SnowFlake schemas, which are better modelled as Entity Relationship-s rather than in a Relational model.

• If you look at what Ted Codd originally did with the Relational model, and you compare that to SQL, you can prove almost nothing about SQL.

Update: here's a blog entry by Stonebraker repeating some of those same points.