Database speed with new in-memory option

Oracle's Ellison promises 'ungodly' database speed with new in-memory option

At the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Oracle announced a new in-memory option for its flagship ‘pluggable’ 12C database. The new option, according to Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison, will be capable of delivering "ungodly" performance enhancements in database speed, and will target transactional as well as analytic workloads.

Announcing the in-memory option for Oracle’s 12C database, Ellison said that the new option will facilitate the accessibility of the in-memory function for the current users of the 12C database merely by "flicking a switch", through a few short lines of code.

What's an In-Memory Database?

In-memory databases, or IMDBs, are also known as main memory database systems (MMDBs) or memory-resident databases.

They store computer data in main memory rather than on hard drives. This makes them faster than disk-optimized databases, because "in situations where only main memory is needed, [IMDBs] can assume a flat memory without a need for all sorts of code to handle uploading and downloading data from and to disks," Kernochan told TechNewsWorld. "That code wastes a lot of time."

With users now having the ability to turn on the in-memory option with a few lines of code, Ellison said that the new option will do away with the need to migrate data into a new database or format, or change allocations; and added: "Everything that works today works when this is turned on.”